8/26/2007 - Shelley Beach
I haven't been diving for a few months, so I did I nice easy dive at Shelley. Bought a new stell tank on the way and had some problems with my buoyancy at the beginning. Othe than that, it was a good dive. Saw a few Wobbegongs and plenty of grouper. Next week I will go for a dive with my daughter for Father's Day. Maybe get some good pics.
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4/25/2007 - Anzac Day dive
Went for a dive on Anzac Day at Shelly beach in Sydney after several days of heavy storms. What a mistake. Shelly beach is normally the place you go when everyplace else is rough. It is almost always calm with good vis. Not today. We started out on the right side with the idea of going out and around the rocks. We dropped down and the vis was about 1 M. At times you couldn't see your hands. But we kept going. Soon we encountered some heavy currents and swells and we were not moving to fast. We ascended to get a bearing. Keep in mind this is a very shallow dive. We decided to scrap the idea of going off to the right and decided to head for the left bank. We dropped down and began finning frantically to get over to the other side. The current was still bad. After about ten minutes we made it to some rocks, but they seemed to be on the wrong side of where we thought. We popped up again and much to our dismay we had managed to go about 10 meters in ten minutes, further out. We scrapped the whole idea and decided to drop down and look around where we were and then head back. Oh well, it is always good to get wet.
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4/18/2007 - Fiji Shark Feeding - second try
We went to Fiji in February for a family vacation. It was a great trip. My daughter and I managed to go for a dive with Aquatrek and feed the sharks. It was great.
  
It took a while to convince my daughter to participate, but she relented and headed out on the boat with me. She was not too impressed when they anchored and started throwing dead fish around the boat to start attracting sharks. She almost backed out at this point, but was persuaded to go. 1st dive - we dropped to 25M and gathered behind a rope and waited for the garbage bin full of dead fish to come down. Sharks were already trying to get into it. We had Lemon sharks, gray nurse, reef and bulls on the first dive. I was allowed to go in closer since I had a camera. Unfortunately, my excitement and bad photography skills prevented me from getting any really good pics. We ascended after about 20minutes.
  
We had to take a break for about 1 1/2 hours. So what do we do? We put or snorkels on and jump back into water that we know there are sharks directly below. 2nd dive - we drop to 15M and again the sharks come in. These sharks are feeding 2 meters in front of you. By Fijians with no protection. This time we got about 8 large bull sharks. Truly amazing.
  
Luckily for us, the video the whole experience and give you the video after the dive. That way you can sit back and enjoy it again and again and not miss all of the sharks - which I did with my camera. I recommend this to veryone. It was my best dive experience to date.
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9/3/2006 - Father's Day Dive
I just got back from a nice dive at Shelly Beach (Manly) with my daughter. It is Father's Day in Australia and she took me for a nice dive. She hadn't been diving for a while, so we took it slow. We saw a bronze whaler (I think that is what it was), a beautiful bull ray, many different fish and something that looked like a huge snail walking along the bottom. It was nice diving with my daughter again. She is in year 12 this year and working very hard to get grades good enough to get into Law school. That would be good - she will make enough money to take me on nice dive trips.
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8/27/2006 - Double Boat Dive
Another great day of diving. We did a double boat dive from Palm Beach wharf. First dive was a 30M dive on the Valiant. Vis was great and sea life was abundant. Water was about 18 degrees. The dive started with some excitement as we all jumped in without our BCD's as the boat was rather crowded. Well, one BCD didn't have air in it and sunk straight to the bottom. Once it was retrieved, we had a great dive.
Second dive was at Bengally - off of Whake Beach. Depth was around 18M. sea life included a few Port Jackson Sharks, a bull ray, a few cuttlefish and a moray eel that decided to go after a few divers.
Pics to come later.
We are going to get this same group together for a dive once a month.
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8/13/2006 - More Shark Tagging
Just got back from my longest dive and my second experience catching Port Jacksons. We went down to Shelly Beach for our second lesson at catching and micro chipping Port Jackson sharks. We stayed down for 73 minutes (shallow dive) and saw about 12 sharks. We managed to catch (or pull out from under ledges) 5 or 6. They were much more aggressive this week than last week. Several of them fought quite hard and tried to head butt us as well as try to bite our hoses. It was a fun day and quite exhilarating. Hopefully, we will get to microchip a few next week.
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8/11/2006 - Mid Life crisis - scuba style
After having started my mid life crisis last year with diving, I decided to go further with my new passion. Since I turned 40 I learned to dive, started playing baseball again (I am a US expat living in Australia) and got a tattoo (double) of my new passion. Take a look.
Back - Diver going into the back
Front - Diver coming out of the chest
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8/8/2006 - Recent Diving
After a trip to the Great Barrier reef in June and a liveaboard weekend in Jervis Bay in July, I decided to do something different in August. I signed up to do shark tagging on the northern beaches. I was trained last Sunday and did a practice dive to find and wrangle some Port Jackson sharks. This coming weekend we will be tagging sharks.
   
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About Me
I am a late bloomer when it comes to diving. After sitting behind a desk for many years, I decided last year to try something I had always wanted to do - scuba dive. Since then, I have become a complete nut about it. I have driven my wife of 22 years nuts also. Now I disappear to the ocean every weekend. My 18 year old daughter has also gotten certified and occassionally dives with her dear old dad.
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