Mar 222016
 
Nurse sharks by night

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 [read more…]

Mar 092016
 
Stalking eagle rays in current

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 [read more…]

Mar 012016
 
Whalesharks in the Maldives

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 [read more…]

Feb 162016
 
Fish on the Lonsdales reefs

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 [read more…]

Nov 242015
 
Kelp Forests in Peru

About the location Lima is closer to the equator than I imagined, but compensates with ocean temperatures that are quite similar to Melbourne. The cool Humboldt current passes up the coast on its way to the Galapagos Islands. Combined with a capital city of nearly 9 million inhabitants, this makes for less than stellar vis on the coast. Local diving includes trips out to swim and snorkel with the huge sea lion colony, and rumours of great kelp forests. About the dive Given I was in town for three weeks I was pretty determined to get wet at some point. Some friends at work were kind enough to point me in the directions of Naylamps School of Diving who were [read more…]

Oct 202015
 
Calendars 2016

It’s that time of year again, with Christmas creeping up on us and the pages of last year’s calendar starting to run out. Calendars f0r 2016 are now on sale. As with previous years I am doing a cave calendar and an ocean calendar. The caves version includes some stunning dry cave shots as well as the underwater stuff. And my ocean diving in the last 12 months reflects more on colourful temperate sponges and some rusty wrecks than the tropical critters of the previous version (though I did manage to squeeze one turtle in there). The full set of photos in each calendar is below. The photo pages are A4 (approx 12″ x 8″) with the dates grid below. [read more…]