We went out to Fairy Bower today to try and spot some dusky whalers. We’ve seen one on a previous dive but it was quite far in poor visibility. Lots of people have reported seeing them but we hadn’t had a really good encounter as yet.

We went in mid-morning. The visibility was quite good, atleast over 10 meters. We didn’t have to venture out far and we saw 3 straight away. They were only juveniles, about 1 metre in length. One of them had a hook in the corner of its mouth. They were stunning. We headed left of the beach and swam to an area that had a sandy bottom, and we just sat and waited. There were some blue morwongs and juvenile snapper scavenging around the weeds. And then the sharks came, the same three, cruising by us. It was amazing. I thought I would be scared but I wasn’t and I didn’t feel afraid either. It was just such a majectic experience.

It was a great dive and we saw lots of interesting fish. The visibility was great and the dive was a nice easy relaxed dive. There was some great photo opportunities (wish we had the G9), there was one in particular where I was on the bottom looking up at a swimmer (we were only in about 3m of water) and 2 duskies swam directly underneath him – awesome!

We went back in the afternoon and hubby thought he saw 7 sharks in one go. I only saw 4 at most.

But perhaps the best sighting of the day was… Valerie Taylor, prominent Australian shark and underwater expert. I felt so silly because I got quite excited being so close to an underwater world celebrity.

We headed out to Shellharbour today to do some diving at The Gutter. There was quite a bit of swell which didn’t make the dive much fun. We saw a big bull ray on the way back, which is one of the resident bull rays that seem to patrol the area. The dive itself wasn’t very interesting. However we were overly cautious and didn’t do much exploring as the last time we went diving in The Gutter (which was also the first time we went diving at that site) we nearly ran out of air and was faced with a long swim back to the entrance.

After lunch we decided we would do our second dive at the Gravel Loader. I was a bit daunted at having to swim out quite far to get to the first set of pylons. The entry and exit is just off the boat ramp. There were lots of guys going out spear fishing.

The swim out was quite uneventful. And the underwater landscape is quite barren getting to the pylons. Apparently there are lots of rock shelfs to explore but I think that is if you went directly out from the boatramp, whereas we turned left and headed out to the pylons.

Once we got close to the pier structure we descended. We followed the advice of one of the spear fishermen, who is also a diver, and took a course between the pylons on either side of the structure.

It was a pretty amazing dive. The pier structure is quite imposing and it is dark under the pier. There were loads of interesting things to see. Each pylon had a covering of barnacles and other growth. There were schools of very large puffer fish and at the end of the pylon, we saw about 5 or 6 giant calamari. They were amazing, I’d never seen them so large before. It was great hovering in front of them and watching them change colour. There was also one pylon in particular with a column of about 50 old wives – one of the most amazing things I’ve seen. I’m not sure why they were congregated in a column like that.

I would love to go back with an underwater camera to take pictures. It would be best if I had a strobe like one of the divers we passed. That may have to wait a while.

We went scouting for a new dive site today, our journey took us to The Steps at Kurnell.

We took my cousins for a drive to Captain Cook park at Kurnell. We stopped at Smith’s Seafood on the way to grab some fish and chips for lunch.

On the way home we stopped and wondered down to The Steps to see how easy it would be to access the site for diving – they don’t call it the steps for nothing!

We went to Shellharbour on the Australia Day long weekend to do some diving on the Saturday.

The first dive was at the Gutter.

The second dive was at Bushrangers Bay, an aquatic reserve located at the eastern end of Bass Point approximately 5 kilometres south of Shellharbour on the NSW South Coast. Declared an Aquatic Reserve in May 1982, it has a strict no take policy. It is recognised as one of the best scuba diving and snorkelling locations along the NSW coastline.

The view from the lookout:

Down at the water’s edge. Notice the pebble beach…

The walk up to the carpark.

Having recently gotten our PADI Open Water dive certification, we started scouting around dive sites in Sydney. We drove over to Bare Island to survey the area. It looks like a pretty good dive site.

There is a car park area at the top and a walk across a wooden bridge to get to Bare Island. Once across the bridge, there are some stairs to the left and entry to the site is via some rocks.

We visited on a weekend and noted lots of divers in the area. This group shown was getting ready to go in for a dive.

Divers at Bare Island

Not looking forward to the long walk across the bridge with our dive gear on!

Originally uploaded by Allerina & Glen MacLarty