I love Lonsdale Wall. I love cave diving too, and the wrecks are pretty cool, but there’s something about this little stretch of brightly coloured, densely packed, huge variety of sponge life living in high velocity waters that makes for the best dives in Australia. The tidal flow in and out of Port Phillip Bay each day means there’s only a short window for diving.

The top of the wall has a forest of kelp, but the underside of the underhangs is where it’s at. Between the carpet of yellow zooanthinds the sponges come in all different colours. The water absorbs colours at depth so a quick strobe flash lets me get a look at the pinks and oranges and see what will come out in photos.

Sponges come in all shapes and sizes, from little fans to big blobby things. The reef fish population is curious about divers, and my latest tactic of floating in one place until they get close enough for photos is working well. For all of these shots, spending five minutes waiting for the local fish to relax and then get interested paid off. Using the rEvo so they weren’t running away every time I breathed out definitely helped.

On the second wall dive I did over the weekend, we landed in a great spot with huge undercuts under every ledge. The sun was behind clouds for most of the dive and low lighting made it more difficult to capture blue water, but the scenery was fantastic. Diving a spot I didn’t recognise and seeing new wall formations was a bonus.

After managing to completely skip last week’s fantastic diving weather, I was determined to get out over the weekend. Of course the weather closed in and the Heads got worse. In desperation to get wet, I ended up at Pope’s Eye. With low expectations I was pleasantly surprised by spending a fun hour photographing gannet bottoms.

Australasian Gannets pair up and nest in big breeding colonies, including on the rocks and platform at Pope’s in Port Phillip Bay. When feeding they dive into the water at high speeds, grab a fish and swim for the surface. The rest of the time they appear to have a great social life. From the boat I watched several turf wars and some friendly social sparring underway. Landing birds would circle to find a good spot, with birds sitting on the water needing several hops across the surface to get into the air.

I was in stealth mode underwater and not producing any bubbles. This allowed me to hide in the refraction of the surface, completely invisible to the floating birds. The inside of Pope’s is shallow and all of these photos were taken from between 1m deep and surface level.

Once I got close enough to be inside Snell’s window, the bird would either swim a metre further away, or stick their head under the surface to see what I was doing down there. The stickybeakers were persistent, alternating between a quick check on the skies and underwater face. Being eyeballed by a gannet while underwater is a fairly unique experience.

After half an hour of flashing their bottoms and occasionally getting a beak in the picture, the gannets were relatively comfortable with me. The photo settings were relatively consistent – high shutter speeds to deal with the bright sky overhead, a touch of one strobe to bring out the shadows and the feet, and a mid range f-stop to keep everything sharp. The main issue was the sand in the water from the course divers practising exercises in the middle of Pope’s, and the difficulty of reviewing shots in bright sunshine. It took some persistence to get angles I was happy with, and to find the curious birds who kept looking down. For a very shallow dive, it was very productive on the photography front.

A big part of big trips is the preparation that goes into them. It’s nice to look at the results – great photos, new cave, nice maps, stories of epic adventure – but rare that the hours of practise and prep get the same publicity. So today’s photos aren’t spectacular or even very exciting. They are important though. Expedition diving is hard work, and a lot of that work occurs before the trip even begins. You have to put in the hours in advance to get results. Pretending that you were born a cave diving genius is fun but somewhat deceptive. It also encourages untrained or underexperienced divers to attempt things they probably shouldn’t.

With that in mind and an upcoming long-range scooter dive later this year, Mum, Dad and I have been spending time driving scooters up and down in fairly boring locations. So far we have checked out the delights of Little Blue sinkhole, a nondescript bit of sand off Cape Woolamai and Flinders Pier at scooter speed. Along the way I have refined my scooter attachment options, played with scooter trim and weighting, and determined my preferred trigger finger.

Flinders Pier is better known for beautiful weedy seadragons and nice macro life. From mid-water and at speed I spotted four or five surprised seadragons as well as a banjo shark and a massive stingray. Smaller life eluded me….macro spotting probably requires a slower speed. The pier gets pretty shallow at low tide. We weren’t sure how close to the beach we would be able to scooter, so the laps went from about halfway down the pier to the end and back again. This gave us an obvious turnaround spot (the platform halfway along) and allowed for an easy distance calculation on Google earth. With a return trip giving a 300m run, we chugged out laps and waited for the batteries to die.

While I had already done a bit of short range scooter time, the longer runs make problems more obvious. After the first kilometre my lower back was not happy with a towing position that had seemed great to start with. This was an improvement on a month ago but obviously isn’t going to cut it for the trip. My thermal comfort decreased significantly after an hour of cold water rushing past me. On the other hand, the arm and shoulder position was great and my trim in the water much more comfortably head down. I reckon there’s at least one more Sunday afternoon of cutting laps underwater in my future as it all starts to come together.

My favourite dives and swims of the Carpe Vita Maldives trip were the night dives. There’s something surreal about swimming through inky black water on a warm tropical night. The otherworldliness increases when large creatures swim through the water beside you, completely ignoring your incursion into their world.

The night dive on the first day was at Alimathaa Jetty. The resort on this island conducts a sunset shark feed and the sharks are very active after the sun goes down. We descended onto the reef to see a couple of nurse sharks and their large fish escorts zipping between the corals. They were using diver lights to hunt out small unfortunate fish in the reef. As a group we tried for a few photos, before moving up to where the rest of the divers were watching sharks, stingrays and fish swarm around as the dive guides released bottles of fish blood.

While the action was frantic to watch, it wasn’t much good for photography. Too many divers in the frame and too much sand in the water. So after watching the movement across the circle for a while I lifted my eyes up. Above and behind the group there were several dozen nurse sharks. Unlike their smaller brethren down on the sand with us, these were the big mamas. They were looping around each other as they manoeuvred in the gentle current. The fish blood circus forgotten, I moved to find the highest possible bommie for my reef hook.

Even there I was not quite close enough to light up the sharks with my strobes. Some patient waiting brought them a bit closer, and eventually I gave up on the reef hook and floated up into the school. Shooting up to get white bellies against black water gave some lovely shots. I was only just getting started when I heard tank banging commotion again below.

Some of the sharks were there for more than dinner – it was orgy time. A cluster of males were wrapped up with a female shark on the sand. All the sharks involved were curling backwards and forwards as they jockeyed for position. Their bodies formed a star against the coral, though getting all the tails in the frame posed some difficulties. If you look closely the wrinkles around their heads show the effort that goes into holding position in the melee. These guys were not bothered by or interested in the curious divers all around them. They stayed fully focus on creating the next generation of sharks as our no deco time came to an end and we followed the current out into the black water.

See my other Maldives posts here and book your own adventures with Liquid Diving Adventures.

My time on the Carpe Vita has come to an end today, and we’re about to be deposited back on dry land. Apart from a very nice BBQ on a deserted atoll one evening last week it will be the first time since boarding. It will certainly be the first time wearing shoes again. Since the last time I wore shoes we have done a lot of channel diving. The Maldives is a series of atolls with central lagoons. As the tides rise and fall, the water flows in and out of the lagoon through the channel between small sandy islands. When the current is running, animals gather at the interface between the channel and the deep blue sea.

The outer reef wall here drops down to several thousand meters. This means it’s theoretically possible to see almost anything swimming past. On our trip we were lucky enough to see a scalloped hammerhead shark swimming past for about 20 seconds. The more common sightings were white tip and grey reef sharks, livened up by the occasional eagle ray.

Unlike the bubble-seeking manta rays who swooped overhead as they moved to and from a cleaning station earlier in the trip, eagle rays don’t like bubbles. They dislike divers enough that they have a tendency to disappear into the blue whenever we get too close. The flock of rays in the photo above was unusual…they moved off just far enough to stay out of reach for photos, while still being visible in the clear water. As a result this photo is very wide angle, showing the wildlife all facing into the strong current over the edge of the drop off.

On another dive I was lucky to get a bit closer. The flock of eagle rays hanging in the current as we descended swam out forwards. They make flying upstream look easy and leave us much less hydrodynamic divers in their wake. The second photo here was the last two rays at the back of the group. They came within striking distance of me as they headed off into the blue distance. Eagle rays are beautiful and graceful animals, and most of all I love the smile behind their long flexible noses. To be allowed close enough to get the shot was a great moment. I am so thankful to have been able to gear up with all new cool scuba diving products, it made a huge difference in my comfort.

I booked this trip through Liquid Diving Adventures.

My first full day on the Carpe Vita (booked with Liquid Diving Adventures) is going well. We arrived in the Maldives on Saturday afternoon and spent the night in a beachside hotel near the airport. After wandering the neighbourhood and picking up a few essentials on Sunday morning it was back to the airport. Instead of taking to the air we wheeled airport trolleys to the dock across the driveway from international arrivals. The diving dhoni pulled up and we were away.

The Carpe Vita is a huge boat. When compared to other liveaboards I have travelled on she feels at least twice the size. With four decks for twenty divers and the dive deck duty offloaded to a companion boat, there’s ridiculous amounts of space for everyone. We’re aboard for 11 nights and will be travelling huge distances down to the far south of the Maldives.

The rest of the trip promises to be quite isolated from the touristing crowds. The first day saw us weaving out of Male atoll through boats of all shapes and sizes. After an early morning dive with multiple manta rays and a top deck breakfast we joined the throng of boats on the lookout for whalesharks. The sharks do a lap down the shallow reef of South Ari atoll, feeding on plankton as they swim.

I took the second photo here on snorkel, cautiously duck diving into the shallows as the whaleshark moved below. He seemed particularly unbothered by the tourists overhead. He also seemed disinclined to stop and we rapidly lost sight of him in the sunny blue water. After a second snorkel drop in deeper water we geared up for the pre-lunch dive.

The reef here is not particularly healthy – the live hard coral is interspersed with dead, algae-covered lumps. The fish life is prolific however with a huge variety of reef fish. The vis was slightly milky which implied there might be small critters in the water column. This was confirmed ten minutes into the dive as a massive whaleshark headed on by. By the time I caught up with him he was about 15m above the bottom. Swimming over a sandy patch surrounded by darker coral gives him a halo and I love this shot of his spotty head, moving into the blue.

Today has been a great start to the trip. Long may it continue!

Two weeks from today I will be on the lovely Carpe Vita in the stunning Maldives with thanks to Liquid Diving Adventures. I’m doing a run to the Deep South for an 11 night liveaboard. We hope to see sharks of all varieties – from fast hammerheads to small reef sharks to really big whalesharks. With some mantas, turtles and tropical reef thrown in for good measure it promises to be a great trip.

With that in mind I thought I had better get out into the ocean and get back into the habit of chasing down some fish. Sven and I headed out from Portsea for a look at the reef off Point Lonsdale. While the seas were relatively flat there was some swell running and the surge was very evident between the rock arches. The kelp was a continuous bed of movement. There was a huge amount of fish life around and I concentrated on timing my movement with the water to get nice and close.

These two old wives were particularly surprised to see me as I headed around the corner. They hang out in pairs and usually have to confer with each other on which direction to swim in. This held them up for a few seconds and gave me enough time to snap this shot. Fish that run present a different photographic challenge to fish that follow – the wrasse in the second shot was determined to get in front of the lens for a proper inspection. My main difficulty was trying not to fry him with too much strobe light as he darted backwards and forwards.

While the reefs we dropped onto appear to be all kelp on first inspection, the channels and gulleys between rocks hold colourful sponge life. Sven and I spent the dive ducking into small hidden spaces to scare the fish life. While the surge made life a bit more interesting, the vis was good and the scenery had fantastic colours. There’s a lot to be said for boring temperate water reef diving. And now I remember how to do it…bring on the tropics!

I’ve dived Flinders Pier before and regularly but it’s been a while. Looking back through my photo archives, it’s been more than 6 months since the macro lens went on the camera. I think there were probably good macro opportunities in Truk Lagoon but it’s hard to concentrate on little things with great big shipwrecks in front of you. In just three weeks I’m off to the Maldives for two weeks of sharks and tropical waters, with a few hints of small critters. I thought I had better get the macro lens dusted off and back in service.

It was a stunning evening at Flinders with the tide creeping in as the sun went down. I disturbed a big stingray as I walked into the water and his surprise appearance set the scene for my encounters on the dive. I spent a few minutes with the first weedy I spotted before leaving him to motor off into the seagrass. The next one was the guy above, much more relaxed and happy to hang around for a portrait. I noticed this eyebrow isopod on him as I downloaded the photos afterwards.

As I was changing angles on him, I spotted a tiny cuttlefish hanging out to the left. He was not in a good spot for a good angle. However he was convinced he was totally camouflaged and didn’t move as I circled around to try and find a shot that would work. From there I moved on to yet another weedy and was just lining him up with a pylon when I realised a piece of grass was in fact the pipefish below. I doubt I would have spotted the pipefish at all if he hadn’t passed across my viewfinder – a nice surprise.

After one more weedy seadragon encounter and after watching a huge school of tiny fish flee through the pylons, I was thinking about heading back to shore. On the way home I was swimming a meter or so above the bottom when a massive octopus swooped under me and engulfed a rock. His tentacles went looking for dinner to flush out into the waiting mouth, with his flared shirts preventing escape. With the rock cluster cleared of dinner, he retracted and scooted over to the next target. I watched him cover half a dozen rocks, half sad that I had the macro lens on and no way to capture the behaviour, and half glad that I could watch without worrying about angles and opportunities.

He jetted out of sight to good hunting and I headed back to shore on the surface of a very calm sea. There’s a lot to be said for summer diving in good vis and good weather. Here’s hoping the Maldives are as calm, as clear and as fruitful – I reckon I might be in luck!