I had the most amazing dive and day yesterday. I’d booked in with Sundive the previous day for a scuba dive at 11am, along with the other guys who were just snorkelling. Monday was a bit windy and cloudy, and there was a big swell and choppy as hell in the sea so we were hoping for a calm day on Tuesday.
It was. We woke around 9am and had breakfast, and got to Sundive at 10.15am. The boys got their snorkelling gear together and I set up all my scuba equipment: mask, fins, BCD, wetsuit, weights, air tank. The boat was just an inflatable speedboat with room for 10 or 12 people. We all heaved the boat into the sea and I took up position in the left hand side as we weaved between the surfers and headed for Julian Rocks. Seating myself on the left side turned out to be a good decision, about a kilometre out to sea, 20m from the boat, I was gleaming to see two dolphins following eachother on the surface.
The boat moored around the northern end of the Rocks, and I started to gear up ready for my SAS-style rolling backwards water entry. Before I had chance, one of the instructors pointed and shouted “Turtle!” and we all looked round to see a giant loggerhead turtle bobbing at the surface. This is going to be good, I thought.
There were three diving in my group, the instructor from Sundive, an Irish girl and me. We deflated our BCD’s and descended. Within a minute or so our instructor took us to the bottom to see an octopus clung to a rock. A minute or two later a 1m wobbegong shark drifted past. We swam down alongside a rock face and hundreds of interesting fish. Visibility was about 20m, and at about that distance I saw a shadow moving away which looked just like the big sharks you see wading through the water on TV. It was a (harmless) 2m Leopard shark I found out later. Didn’t stop me shitting myself at the time.
Further along the trail, we looked down and resting on the sandy bottom was another giant Loggerhead Turtle like we’d seen on the surface. It was over a metre long and had a bite out of it’s side - our instructor pointed to it and made a fin shape with his hands, signifying it was a shark attack. And speaking of sharks, I spotted a big bugger also resting at the bottom and pointed it out to the others. It was a 2m Wobbegong shark, and the instructor signalled for us not to go any closer.
To be honest I’d got my money’s worth already. But then a huge Eagle ray came into sight and flapped its way past us. We neared what appeared to be a cave in the rocks, in fact it was called Cod Hole and we swam inside it and negotiated up through the narrow walls where the inside was jam-packed with massive cod and other fish. A Green Turtle was having his lunch at the exit point of the hole.
We were nearing the end of the dive and therefore ascended a little way (this helps remove the excess nitrogen from your blood.) As we waited to surface properly, I was amazed to see below us a group of seven big Bat rays all swimming together gracefully off into the darkness.
I surfaced a happy man.
I rejoined Foley, Connor and Nick who had an equally good time just peering down from the surface, they saw turtles and sharks too. The boat brought us back to shore and that was that. The only annoying thing was that I forgot to have a shave in the morning so my mask kept filling up with water via the hairs on my top lip! Regularly clearing my mask was a small price to pay though, a bit like the trip itself: the whole experience cost me less than £30. You cannot say fairer than that can you?