A special mention to Sandy Hain for this trip as she kindly organised the weekend's accommodation. Now don't get me wrong, the dive lodge is a lovely spot, quite good enough for a place to sleep between fish botheing episodes but it *does* lack that homely feel. Sandy managed to book out accommodation for us in a beatifully kept unit with a balcony overlooking the lake which was ideal for beer and sunsets and beer.
Special thanks also to Tanya who provided a plethora of Shapes for mid morning munchies. They also went down well with the afore-mentioned beer!
Saturday morning was exciting as we were diving at Seal Rocks - a legendary site which I've never yet managed to dive as it takes pretty good weather conditions. Gear on boat we drove down to meet the boat. Weather was absolutely perfect and we managed two dives, one at Big Rock and one at Little Rock (nowhere near Arkansas apparently).
Water temperature was a toasty 24 and the viz was astonishing - easily 30+ metres - as you can see from the photos. Missing from the piccies is the 4ft turtle which was cruising by as we hit the bottom of the line as I was too slow to snap it before it drifted off into the blue.
I kid you not when I say that there must have been in excess of 100 Grey Nurses on Big Rock that day. Big buggers too! You could barely move without bumping into one of them. In fact Col, Sandy and myself all had close encounters...
Ooops! Didn't see you there
Sandy almost gets sat on by a decent sized grey Nurse
On top of the Nurses we had a trio of sleepy but good sized (5ft+) Port Jacksons and the usual large Wobbies.
But it's not all sharks. We had schools of kingfish and jewfish, a couple of numb rays, black rays and a particularly well fed Nudi too.
Sunday saw a double dive at The Pinnacle and Latitude Rock. Viz was still outstanding and these were a couple of relaxing dives. Lattitude in particular is a great little dive with plenty of life, at 12m-15m it's much easier going than some of the deep dives and easy to enjoy at a leisurely pace.
And then it was time to go home.
And then, just when we thought the weekend couldn't get any better, on the boat ride home we ran into a huge number of Dolphins who were looking for some fun. Although don't tell Ron that or he'll hit us up for the Dolphin watching surcharge!!
For more pictures, check out my Picasa page
