The HMS Russell was a WWI pre-dreadnought. Unlike the WWII wrecks that we dived first in Malta, the Schnellboot and the HMS Southwold, the Russell has been on the bottom for a century. She was launched in February 1902 as one of six Duncan-class ships with the new four cylinder triple-expanision engines. During the Great War the Russell spent time at Scapa Flow and on the Northern Patrol. After a stint in the English Channel, a refit in Ireland and supporting the Gallipoli campaign up to evacuation of troops in early 1916, she was waiting to enter the Grand Harbour in Malta in April 2016 when she struck two mines.

Two mines laid by the German U-boat U-73 the night before caused a fire in the aft of the ship, following by an explosion at one of the turrets. The order to abandon ship was given. She took over 20 minutes to sink and of the 750 people on board, 625 were saved. This included a number who swam the four miles to shore.

The wreck has landed upsidedown on the seafloor, probably tipped over on descent by the weight of the armour and guns on her deck. The edge of the hull is sitting about a metre above the sand, allowing just enough space for divers to swim across the sand with the deck overhead. Unlike the two wrecks we dived initially in Malta, the visibility here was poor. Murky water made it both difficult to identify key features of the ship, and difficult to get clear photos.

We landed near the bow of the wreck and I swam out for a look up at her looming out of the dark. The Russell was 140m long and in 115m of water there was no chance of an end to end swim. Instead we headed along the side, checking out the large guns lying out sideways on the sand. She has been well and truly colonised by shells and sponges, and I got buzzed by a large John Dory fish, living beside the hull.

While this was an amazing dive for the history, the vis and the orientation meant there wasn’t as much to see. A dive on her stern end to see the damage caused by the mines would be interesting – maybe next time.

I spent the Easter long weekend in Mt Gambier. Four days of uninterrupted diving in sites at every level was a nice change from the usual two day jaunts. The first couple of days I dived with fellow-rEvo diver Tom in Pics, Kilsby’s and the site above, Ela Elap. Ela is a sinkhole site south of Mt Gambier. Unlike Piccaninnie Ponds it has greenish waters and a murky bottom. Ela is known for being cold and it lived up to its reputation – a balmy 18 degrees on the surface gave way to a chilly 11 degrees below 20m.

We jumped in and spiralled down through the very murky surface layer to the dark water underneath. I took some shots of the tree in Ela a few months back. While I was happy with those photos, I had very limited time to take them before the bubble-driven silt started to rain into the shot. With both photographer and model diving rebreathers, I thought I had a better chance to get shots through clear water.

This time around the water was darker and finding the right settings took some time. The photo above incorporates lights from another buddy pair in the water at the same time as us. The greenish glow of the sun is barely visible in top left. I was up at ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/20th to get any ambient light at all. But having worked out my settings we then spent a further 20 minutes trying to find good angles through the branches. The key was big enough spaces for Tom to get into without disturbing the silty branches, small enough branches for the strobes not to be shadowed out, and short distances to allow for even lighting. Nothing like a good challenge.

Once I was happy with the branch shots through the middle of the crown we went for a swim around the sinkhole. Halfway through we discovered this much small tree sprouting from the silty floor. I love the colours in this shot, from reddish branches to greenish-black water. After our circumnavigation it was time to head up into the warmer, dirtier shallows with relief – it was cold down there!

After an epic 2 weeks, 23 different wrecks and nearly 4,000 photos I’ve made it home from Truk Lagoon. As I churn through the photos (Why do I have way too many “final picks”? How does one choose between a giant propellor shot and a well lit cargo hold interior? How many trip photos can one reasonably ask friends and family to look at?) I was struck by how much I learned about ship layouts during my visit.

The normal wrecks dived in Melbourne were mostly scuttled in the 1930s or 40s. This means both that anything interesting was removed first, and they’ve had a lot more time to break down. In many cases all that’s left is the hull and some of the superstructure. Whereas in the balmy waters of Truk Lagoon the wrecks went down with everything and in some cases everyone on board and most of it is still there. This means cargo holds full of munitions and vehicles, galleys with stoves and crockery and engine rooms with walls of tools.

Diving large intact shipwrecks every day gave me a chance to develop some wreck identification skills. In particular once my models arrived for the second week I was able to add some off camera strobes to the adventure and get much better photos away from the daylight zone. This opened up cargo hold interiors and in particular engine rooms.

Part of the joy of wreck diving for me is the three dimensional environment. Being underwater lets me move through space like I’m flying, and flying is more fun when there’s more to do than skim over flat bottoms. While the cargo holds and twisted superstructure provides great scenery, the working heart of the ship comes equipped with stairs and gangways. Now that they’re underwater, I could fly through the massive machinery designed to push thousands of tonnes of ship through the oceans.

Engine rooms also provide for recognisable tools and unrecognisable banks of equipment. In the photo above, the middle dial shows the tilt of the ship from port to starboard. In this case she lies on her starboard side and the little dial is wedged all the way over to one side. In other places the gauge faces were visible, or red/green glass of status light reflected in my strobes, or banks of fuses were still in place. Off camera strobes and bubble-free diving made a big different to the photos I was able to get, although the wrecks weren’t as silty as I had expected. Being this far into the interior of the wreck made the ocean feel a lot more like a nice dark cave with interesting decorations. I look forward to having some more rusty experiences in 2016.

Truk Lagoon is a long way from anywhere. After United cancelled their flight from Cairns to Guam I re-routed my trip via Hong Kong. This made the first leg of the trip nine hours in the air instead of three while leaving the second leg to Guam at five hours. After two international flights, a 14 hour stopover in delightful Guam and the TSA going through every item in my hand luggage, I arrived in Chuuk late on Sunday night excited for two weeks of diving.

With some creative packing and use of the hand luggage allowance I managed to make it with rEvo, camera and extra strobes. I’m diving at Blue Lagoon Resort and enjoying their excellent rebreather services. After a couple of checkout dives on the first days, day three saw our little boat of four divers headed out to see the San Francisco Maru.

As with most of the wrecks in the Lagoon, the San Fransisco was a cargo ship carrying things from one place to another. She’s a popular technical dive here as she sits in 60m on the sand. The top of the deck varies between 45 and 50m. As she is a bit deeper and further from the sunlight there are fewer corals encrusting her surface. This helps with being able to see the bow gun and the shape of the bow clearly.

The big drawcard for me was the selection of Japanese tanks sitting on the deck. There is one on the port side and two leaning on each other on the starboard side. When I swam back down the deck after taking photos of the bow they were circled by fish. Between the tanks on each side is a big hole criss-crossed by beams. In the hold underneath are two tanker trucks. Three of the four headlights are still in place and on the port truck the steering wheel is sitting askew in the remains of the cabin. The trucks are surrounded by 44 gallon drums and there’s an ordinance trolley propped between them.

I happily spent a half hour bottom time lining up shots of the three areas you can see in this post – bow and bow gun, tanks on deck and trucks in the hold. The aft area of the ship is supposedly more damaged and less recognisable, as well as being deeper. While it’s hard to resist the temptation to swim around the whole wreck like a nutjob, the photos are definitely better when I slow down and concentrate on getting a few shots right as opposed to high speed terrible photos of everything. A lesson to remember for the rest of the trip.

Here’s to a merry Christmas and lots of fantastic diving.

About the wreck

The Milora was a steam powered coal cargo transport, built in 1921 in Melbourne and initially named the Emita. She had a cargo of 2,800 tonnes of coal on board when she ran aground in the Port Phillip Heads in September 1934. After removing 1,800 tonnes of coal she was refloated a week later with most of her hold flooded, and taken to Williamstown between two tugs. By 1935 she was found to be uneconomical to repair, stripped of her valuable parts and taken out and scuttled.

The Milora now sits in about 40m of water. Originally 100m long, she is one of the larger wrecks in the Ship’s Graveyard and a great dive.

About the dive

We’d done a morning dive on the Wareatea and were looking for a slightly shallower second splash. The vis on the Wareatea had been spectacular and the sponges on the stern of the wreck were stunning. The Milora had similar vis but the colour of the water seemed just slightly more grey than blue. Combine that with an absence of orange and yellow sponge coatings and the photos from this dive have a very different feeling.

About the photo

After having some difficulties with the off camera strobes on the morning dive I rearranged things slightly for this one. Unfortunately this made things worse instead of better and there was no off camera light to be had. Luckily the sun was still out and we were slightly shallower to allow for some ambient light. The stern here is a large tangled mess of metal and I moved around trying to find recognisable shapes.

I like the shots here that shot the rust breaking through the sealife, and the contrast between the orange and the blue water. I felt throughout the dive that I wasn’t capturing quite the right angle, so this wreck might benefit from a couple more dives to find the shot that’s hiding in there.

About the wreck

Unlike other wrecks in the Ship’s Graveyard, the Wareatea was a passenger and cargo transport, built in 1883. She ran between Melbourne and the north coast of Tasmania between Federation in 1901 and the end of WWII in 1945, when she was scuttled. The wreck has great life on it with nice sponge growth and schools of fish around. While the bow is somewhat twisted and flat to the seabed the stern stands up and has the prop and rudder still in position.

About the dive

After a few weeks of diving in some pretty average vis, I was wondering if wreck diving was all it’s cracked up to me. Upon jumping into deep blue ocean I decided it was all worth it. We planed out to the Graveyard in flat seas and the ocean lived up to expectations.

Of course, not everything in life is meant to be easy. Despite having changed my faulty strobe bulkhead over for a new one and tested it before the dive, the strobe attached to it refused to fire. The first 5 minutes of bottom time were spent trying to get enough coverage with one strobe without hazing out the foreground. I was glad to have off camera strobes on my buddy but annoyed that they seemed determined to flare off his bailout tanks. And I was feeling the pressure of good vis and a very nice wreck – better surface with some good shots!

About the photos

Technical issues notwithstanding I was happy with the photos that came out of the dive. I like the top photo here because of the combination of foreground colour, background superstructure and diver for scale all coming together. I found the fans on the boiler particularly photogenic. They may not be orange but they are all aligned to point in the same direction, bristling out of the boiler. It was also good to be able to shoot this at 1/40th of  second and f7.1 and have the clear water still deliver enough sunlight to the sensor.

After landing amidships we made our way to the stern to check out the prop. It was there as advertised but somewhat buried in among the other wreckage and I moved about to try and get a good angle. I like this shot because the off camera strobes are flaring but somewhat hidden with excellent modelling skill. The yellow zooanthids are always a nice contrast against blue water. Even with only one strobe working I’ve managed to get relatively good light coverage and capture rudder, prop and model in one go.

This was a brilliant dive and a nice change from the recent conditions. Fingers crossed that it continues through into summer!

About the wreck

The ex-HMAS Adelaide is a sister ship to the ex-HMAS Canberra. Both were deliberately sunk after a useful life of service and now serve as diver attractions. I have dived the Canberra (which sits out of Melbourne) a few times, but I hadn’t visited the Adelaide. She can be found on the NSW Central Coast, just over an hour’s drive north of Sydney.

About the dive

I was up in NSW to give a talk at Dive Imports on the delights of cave diving around the country. After a great night with an enthusiastic audience we were up early Saturday morning to head out to the wreck. The topside weather was fantastic with bright sunshine. Unfortunately the glass seas had developed a large swell over the last few days. Once in the water it was clear this was going to be a dark and surgey dive.

I followed Sue and we headed down to the engine room, timing my movement through the doorways with the surge. I was hoping for better vis inside but it was all pretty stirred up. From there we worked our way up through the wreck to the bridge, then back along the deck to find the mooring line. I got some up close shots of the rooms and features as we worked our way through, with the dark water outside making it feel very cave-like at times.

For the second dive we had a quick dip and a play with a couple of Suex scooters. It’s well known that scooters make you look a lot cooler. The problem for photography is catching it on camera as divers whiz past. I was happy to get this shot of Ian entering the wreck on the way to the bow.

About the photos

I was very glad to have brought my off camera strobes along and to have found a willing model to carry them! Without the extra backing light the top shot here would have had the diver disappearing into the background. The extra light behind the deck railings appears to be coming from Sue’s torch but is also shining out from the strobe on her hip d-ring.

Even in terrible vis it’s possible to take photos that show off the wreck, and a nice reminder that it’s not always blue, calm and clear under the ocean.

About the wreck

The Pioneer was built in 1905 and worked as a dredge ship. She was scuttled in the Ship’s Graveyard off the Barwon coastline in 1950. She sits on the sand in approximately 45m with much of hull still intact. The twin propellors, the stern and the bow are still there, covered in sponges and sealife.

About the dive

Despite flat seas up top it was green and murky in the water. The sunshine was percolating down through the dark water so we had a bit of light on the bottom. We dropped down the shot near the stern and I ducked under the back of the boat. Down on the sand there was a touch of current running and it was hard to get a single propellor lined up for a good shot.

I was also diving with one functioning strobe after a bulkhead pin snapped off inside my housing. Having two bulkheads is handy – I was able to plug the defective one and get in the water anyway. But it did leave me at a slight disadvantage for light coverage across the pictures. I compensated by slinging extra strobes at my buddies for a little extra light.

About the shot

The first image here was taken towards the end of our bottom time, as we swam back down the deck of the ship. I like the hidden light factor of the off camera strobe here and the way it brings colour to the corals without also creating a giant hotspot. The twisted arch overhead and the backlighting of the orange sponge fingers on the right make it work, even in terrible vis.

The second shot was taken by aiming between the rudder and the hull of the ship. Probably wondering what I was up to, a diver pointed their torch back at me. The light is split by the top blade of the port propellor.

In clear water this would have been an amazing dive. In murky water it was still quite fun – there are always some photos to be taken, whatever the conditions.