Wreck Diving - Part 1

This past weekend I completed my wreck diving specialty course, and there certainly could have been a better weekend for it. I have been excited about the course for some time. Wrecks are fantastic dives for many reasons. They provide shelter and so are quickly taken over by marine life and act as a reef. All sorts of fish love to hang out in them. Wrecks are visually striking and excellent photography sites. They also encourage a diver to research its history, which is often as interesting as the dive itself. And so the wreck course was on.

There are heaps of wrecks around Sydney, owing to plenty of harsh waters. Saturday we were supposed to do the Bombo down in Wollongong. The Bombo served in WWII and continued on for commercial shipping afterwards until it sank in 1949. The story is quite interesting but tragic. 12 crew died, 2 survived... and they were so close to shore. The wreck, 32 meters down, is in the middle of a high-traffic shipping channel. I was supposed to dive this site a few months ago but the large number of massive ships - and miscommunication regarding their schedule - forced us to abort. I was thrilled to get another chance to see it, but this past Saturday the seas were too rough for the site and Friday the location was moved to inside Sydney Harbour.

The new plan was to do the Royal Shepherd and the Centurion. The Centurion sunk one night in 1887, the Royal Shepherd sank one night in 1890, both with no casualties except the cargo. Both seem to have been simply the result of sloppy seamanship. I had been to this site before and there were loads of fish. Large cuttlefish, pufferfish, some small sharks... Unfortunately Sydney Harbour was even too rough to dive and Saturday morning our location was changed again.

And so on over to the Itara in Gunnamatta Bay. Note the lack of link to more info on the Wollomstrom. It's a small tugboat that sank in the silty bay, known for its terrible visibility. Surprisingly I had been to this site too: the last time the Bombo dive was cancelled. The vis would get so bad you had to hold hands with your buddy. But this was a course and tough conditions help you improve diving skills. I had a good buddy and knew we would make the most of it... even if the most exciting thing about the dive is the knowledge that if you came surfaced directly above the wreck there would be a good chance your head would be knocked off by the ferry or one of the many pleasure craft. More on that tomorrow.

Diving Photos - The Leap to The Steps

As promised, I've uploaded some photos from my dive this past weekend. Details of the dive and a short video of a baby cuttlefish can be found here. Some of the highlights from the dive:

Large Snail (Whelk?)

Just cruising along. I think this type is called a whelk. If you know, please let me know.

Eastern Blue Groper

These are very curious fish. They swim amoung divers and seem to be begging for food. Thankfully it is illegal to spearfish them.

Weedy Sea Dragon

Weedy Sea Dragons are classified as near threatened. They are fragile creatures who maintain their depth with a tiny bladder. They blend in well with the weeds, but you can corral them into view without touching or harming them.

Port Jackson Shark

We saw two good-sized port jacksons but I did not get any good shots. This is one of the many eggs we came across. The spiral, pinecone-looking thing IS actually an egg.

Baby Cuttlefish

Ah, cuttlefish - my favourite creatures of the sea. This little guy is just a baby. Hopefully he will grow to be one or two feet long. His tentacles are up so that he can easily grab prey and pull it into his mouth to be crushed by his strong, parrot-shaped beak. His colour and texture change depending on the surface he hovers above. If you watch the video you'll see him turn smooth and white when he moves over the sand.

View the entire gallery here.

Baby Cuttlefish - Diving The Leaps and The Steps

I took my camera diving this past weekend and managed to get some decent shots. Good old Kurnell - Captain Cook Park. Sunday was a lot cooler than Saturday but the rain held off. "Why would you care if it rains? You're underwater, you knob!" you may say. Well yes we are underwater, but I'm not a knob.

For the first dive we jumped in at The Leap - so called because you just step off the side of a rather high, sheer rock into the surging sea. We swam out about 15 meters before dropping and doing a drift dive down to a point called The Steps - so called because you have to walk up many, many steps to get to the carpark. "Why don't you walk down at The Steps rather than up it? It seems awfully silly to make yourself walk up it," you may say. Because then how would we get out of the water at the aforementioned high, sheer rock? Now who's silly.

The first dive was a bit murky thanks to a southerly blowing in from... the South. Still, we saw a huge sea snail, some blue gropers, a weedy seadragon, loads of nice coral and fish. The second dive was great, with better visibility and loads more to see: many more gropers, about eight weedies, port jackson sharks, and two baby cuttlefish. These are my favourite things to find while diving. These are the smallest I've seen - most have been about a foot to two feet long. These were a mere four inches. In this video you can see the guy with his tentacles up, in hunting pose, backing away from the camera before changing his colour to match the white sand and jet-propelling him away from me:


I'll get more photos from the dive up soon...

Pyrmont Good Food Markets

On the first Saturday of every month the Sydney Morning Herald sponsors a market in Pyrmont. I think this is the best growers market that I have ever been to. Snails, goat, lamb, trout... wait I just realised that I've posted about it before... yes yes, when I posted about the rainbow trout recipe. I apologise for repeating myself. Here is a picture of the fertile market ground:

CORRECTION

A friend of mine has called into question a statement I made in a previous post. In that post I said that, since a toilet flush is not effected by the Coriolis effect, the direction in which it empties is random. I have thought about this some more, and it's probably not random at all but determined by some combination of gravity, plumbing and water current at the time of flushing. Yes I have a friend who is more pedantic than me. Thank you for the correction, Glenn.

It Has All Been A Lie

It started with the Tooth Fairy... Next it was the Easter Bunny, a free lunch, Pluto as the 9th planet, the Crocodile Hunter's invincibility and, most recently, Santa Claus. You would think the lies and deception end would there... but no. I have just learned that something I have taken as truth is a LIE:
TRUTH!

Yes that is our bathtub (with spices in it) draining clockwise. Water in Sydney, and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, empties down a drain just as it does in the Northern Hemisphere: randomly. The Coriolis effect applies to storms like hurricanes and cyclones based on the Earth's rotation. It seems that most of us have toilets that flush must faster than it takes for the world to turn, so there's no impact there. I shall sleep now.

The Australian Beer Festival

The Australian Beer Festival took place this past Saturday and Sunday at the Australian Heritage Hotel. From a participant's point of view it was a huge success! The stands were set up along both streets and exhibitors came from all over Australia. My personal favourites were Five Islands Brewing Company, Hunter Brewing, Redoak and Matilda Bay's Alpha Pale.

FIBC's Mick and Tim were up from the Gong with three tasty brews. Their pilsener is available in bottles, but not here in Sydney yet. There's talk of bottling their wheat. I sure hope they do: it's a beautiful German style hefe. I can't think of any Aussie wheat that's as good and available in bottles.

Hunter has a really nice pale ale to join their kolsch as a tasty beer made in wine country. We had the opportunity to speak with Jeremy, a brewer from Matilda Bay, and learned that they really encourage them to experiment with new styles of beer. It sure paid off with their pale ale... and their coffee-flavoured crema is worth a go. Redoak offered three from their selection as well as blackberry hefeweizen sorbet. Dana and I have popped over there for desert - it's fantastic.


Even more enjoyable than the beer was the company! Several BAs made their way to the event. It's always great to meet fellow beer lovers.



And a shout out to Dave Gumm of Dave's Homebrew.


View all the photos here.