Sponges on Lonsdale Wall

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  No Responses »
Oct 132015
 
Sponges on Lonsdale Wall

About the site I love Lonsdale Wall. It’s my favourite dive site in Melbourne – better than the scuttled wrecks, better than the really-hard-to-get-on reefs. Even in terrible conditions it’s usually not bad and on a good day it’s stunning. With good vis you can hang over the edge of the wall and look down into deep blue water below. If there’s a little bit of tide still running you can drift slowly along beside the yellow zooanthids and orange sponges, watching fish follow you curiously. In short, it’s nice. About the dive Sunday’s dive was the afternoon slack at the end of the flood tide. With good vis outside that morning I was looking forward to blue water and [read more…]

Draughtboard Shark at Phillip Island

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  No Responses »
Jun 162015
 
Draughtboard Shark at Phillip Island

I’m renovating my kitchen at the moment. Keen observation of other divers’ experiences of renovation tells me that renovating means not getting underwater for months at a time. I’m determined not to let my project about the house stop me from having fun. So after a productive day of pulling up tiles and with a forecast for Bass Strait of “light and variable winds”, Dad and I headed out of Phillip Island on Sunday. The light winds were a blessing and there was no surface chop. Unfortunately this also meant an absence of the northerly breezes which normally flatten out the swell. Despite a run of calm days a persistent one to two metre swell was showing no signs of [read more…]

Swimthroughs in Bicheno

 Ocean diving, Reef diving, Tasmania  1 Response »
Jul 152014
 
Swimthroughs in Bicheno

About the site I was down in Bicheno for some reef diving at the start of June as part of the Combined Clubs Weekend. I posted before about the gorgeous orange and yellow sponges and prolific seawhips on the granite boulders down there. The water was blue for the six dives I did, but I gathered from the locals that recent storms had stirred things up. Certainly the weather wasn’t great while we were there and these photos were taken in fairly surgey conditions. This was our last dive of the trip and we were up shallower than the morning dive. Add that to these very cool boulders leaning in to form swim throughs, and we had some high speed [read more…]

Seawhips in Bicheno

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  3 Responses »
Jun 172014
 
Seawhips in Bicheno

About the site Bicheno is a small town up on the northern end of the east coast of Tasmania. With prevailing south westerly winds through winter the waters are relatively calm and the diving a (very) short boat trip from shore. If I was living in Bicheno I’d strongly consider buying a nice underwater scooter rather than a boat. If you were feeling enthusiastic the dive sites are swimmable distance. But we were there for the 2014 Combined Clubs Weekend and had the pleasure of going out with Bruce from Bicheno Dive and his very nice boat. About the dive The shot above is from the first dive of the long weekend. We jumped in and dropped down into clear [read more…]

Diving the Similan Islands from the MV Giamani

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  1 Response »
Jan 072013
 

[fsg_gallery id=”1″] Instead of showcasing just two images this week, I thought I’d share my curated selection from last week’s trip to Thailand with you. Over the course of six days I did 22 dives as we sailed north and west from Phuket to the Similan and Surin Islands on board the MV Giamani. The water was warm, the vis was great, the fish were abundant, and the liveaboard routine of dive-eat-sleep-repeat was excellent. Ricardo’s tolerance of photographers and their speed underwater (slooooow) was fantastic and much appreciated. I was able to get some good experimentation in with my new macro lens, so I’ll be able to share some of my discoveries of very small marine life with you. There [read more…]

Blue water on Lonsdale Wall

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  3 Responses »
Nov 192012
 
Blue water on Lonsdale Wall

About the site Lonsdale and Nepean Walls border the deep water channel that runs into Port Phillip Bay. They can be dived at slack tide each day, when the water balances inside and outside the bay and the currents stop running. The flow of water means filter feeders like the bright yellow zooanthids, sponges and soft corals can be found up and down the walls. Lonsdale Wall also runs a fair way into the bay and is protected in poor weather. As a result, it’s an easy dive to do when the swell is running and the wind is adding white caps on top. Which is convenient, but also means I’d dived the wall in terrible conditions and terrible vis [read more…]

 Older Entries  Newer Entries