Aussie diving 16th Feb to 28th Feb

[Sas]

Hope your dive went well Steve.

We had an interesting dive last night trying to find Paul's yacht cover. We never ended up finding it - viz ranged between 0-20cm (about 15cm at least layer of silt on the bottom) and we did snakes up and down around his yacht but seeing as the viz was so bad we would have missed it easy. Or it has floated off to Queenscliff by now We were thinking next time of planting a pole under his boat and tying a line off to it and going around and round in circles. Anyway, it was good navigation practice (I think we did ok even without being able to see the compass a lot of the time and also a cross current) as well as practice holding depth without any kind of external reference.

 

[almitywife]

hey sas... how far is the travel from melbourne CBD to dive the subs??? (in the bay??)

hubby might have a conference in melbourne and day 1 is a golf tornie.... and he doesnt play golf

 

[Sas]

hey sas... how far is the travel from melbourne CBD to dive the subs??? (in the bay??)

hubby might have a conference in melbourne and day 1 is a golf tornie.... and he doesnt play golf

I'd give it an hour and a half drive. He can be picked up Portsea or Queenscliff side to be taken out of the Bay to the subs. Probably if he is in CBD Queenscliff is the closer of the two. When is he coming down?

 

[digital_steve]

Did 60mins last night shallow (like 6 and half metres) and the brain cooperated. Got paranoid when i got home, but i'm sure that'll pass.
Finally saw my first spotted handfish! Great little creatures. Also saw the biggest occy i've come across... he started to get a bit fidgety, so i gave him some space.
Vis was about 4-5m off Bellerive Beach and there were heaps of thermocline spots, which at first wigged me out because i thought "oh god, my vision has gone funny", but then i realised it was warmer too

Edit: Oh I just thought, maybe you could do a few dives with 100% O2? One of my friends got a shallow bend and they said when he goes back to diving, he should do shallow dives with as high as oxygen as possible. He might do an Advanced Nitrox course but with a depth restriction as they are not sure he will be able to do deep diving.

I'd be a bit gunshy using 100% on my dives. I was diving air last night, but from here on in i'll use 32% on air tables just as a buffer.
Out of interest, can you tell me more about your friends shallow bend? What sort of depth, time and symptoms occured? Was there a physical condition or situation on the dive that they attributed the bend too?
I remember someone famous saying there's no such thing as an undeserved hit, so i'd be really interested to hear more about this.

 

[thanksforallthefish]

Glad it went well for you steve ...

 

[Sas]

Did 60mins last night shallow (like 6 and half metres) and the brain cooperated. Got paranoid when i got home, but i'm sure that'll pass.
Finally saw my first spotted handfish! Great little creatures. Also saw the biggest occy i've come across... he started to get a bit fidgety, so i gave him some space.
Vis was about 4-5m off Bellerive Beach and there were heaps of thermocline spots, which at first wigged me out because i thought "oh god, my vision has gone funny", but then i realised it was warmer too

Ok well glad to hear it went pretty well all things considered

I'd be a bit gunshy using 100% on my dives. I was diving air last night, but from here on in i'll use 32% on air tables just as a buffer.
Out of interest, can you tell me more about your friends shallow bend? What sort of depth, time and symptoms occured? Was there a physical condition or situation on the dive that they attributed the bend too?
I remember someone famous saying there's no such thing as an undeserved hit, so i'd be really interested to hear more about this.

Ok well my friend is a bit of an outlier as he had the second shallowest hit of DCI in Australia - it was a 3m pier dive. On air, it had physical exertion as well as many rapid ascents and decents. He is fairly new to diving (think he'd done around 25 dives) Not sure how long the dive was but I will ask him next time, probably quite long though as it was a shallow dive. Symptoms were tingling hands (edit: I had "memory loss" as well before but not so sure about that actually as that was told to me third hand - I'll ask my friend as I have only heard him mention the tingly hands, not memory loss). Anyway he responded well to O2 and a few chamber rides. He has gone to many doctors to try and figure out why he got hit (and they aren't 100% sure it was DCI, but the O2 and chamber helping makes it seem likely). No PFO and they've ruled a few other things. He is seeing another hyperbaric doctor again soon and hopefully will be cleared for diving then but he might have restrictions on the types of dives he can do (i.e. nitrox on air tables, not too deep and so on). He said seeing as they've ruled a lot of things out he thinks it is really just because of the very messy dive profile and the exertion.

I guess another possibility is that he might have been a bit bent on a previous dive and it just got worse over a few dives. Let me know if you want more info and I can ask him

 

[stormysea]

Yesterday was a great day for diving. My son and I went out to Cook Island. Pete and Shon where doing Open Water dives for students. Pete just took care of Nat(my son). Nat hadn't been feeling the best but wanted to get these dives done. However he was pretty thrilled to touch a leapord shark and to see Nemo and Dory! So thats his first 2 of 4.

For me, I can remeber my first dives there and how hard it was for me and this time it was fantastic. I didn't get to dive for long. 40mins down at 14m and I still had 160bar left. Wish I had had more time. I got to touch my first turtle and I saw and took photos of some of the fantastic Nudibranches!!

Hopefully the weather holds this weekend and we can do Byron!

 

[Sas]

Well unfortunately my dives around Phillip Island were cancelled yesterday due to bad weather. Me and Paul were 20km away from the dive pick up at San Remo when we got the call so all our efforts in getting up at 4.30am and various other preparations were all in vain!!! Anyway, the others in the club said they'd organise dives through Portsea so after three hours of driving we made it to Portsea for a boat dive.

The boat dive was to 'The Links' which is on a wall near Port Phillip Heads. The dive was great and we had 20m of viz! There was so much to see too, so it was a great dive. We cut it pretty fine with shipping though and I could see a pilot boat coming in right near where me and Paul surfaced and a big ship came through not long after we got on the boat.

Our second boat dive was cancelled and they offered a drift dive instead. Though we decided to do a shore dive at Portsea Pier instead. Me and Paul were mainly practicing skills (someone loaned us a stage to play with - AL80 so a bit excessive but they hadn't brought the 40cf one - which is the one I am planning to get later on in the year). We saw lots of calamari, weedy sea dragons and other fish.

Here are some pictures!

School of calamari at Portsea

Grumpy blue devil (they are always grumpy )

The Links was very colourful!

Some divers in the distance near the shot at The Links

Velvet Leatherjacket - I love these

Got a night dive on Mon, which will be my last dive before Fish Rock. A guy from Scubaboard (that we dived with last week) will be joining us again as well as another friend from our diveclub who will probably loan me twin 7s to dive with so I can see what that is like Though poor Paul has to go around Melbourne picking us all up as my car has died (Dan was teaching someone to drive manual in it this morning and well.. the clutch blew up!) and I was supposed to be giving a few people a lift!

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Great shots Sas I LOVE the blue devil shot... wow.... was that your camera or Chilled Mammel's. Great viz. I can't wait for next week. Didn't dive this weekend trying to get my back problem settled before the trip.

 

[Sas]

Great shots Sas I LOVE the blue devil shot... wow.... was that your camera or Chilled Mammel's. Great viz. I can't wait for next week. Didn't dive this weekend trying to get my back problem settled before the trip.

First and last are mine, The Links shots (incl Blue Devil) are Paul's. I tend to only use the camera on shore dives as I have time to set up shots and things like that. On boat dives I don't usually like to take it as I prefer just to be diving on those! Paul will take his camera on any kind of dive though So if I feel the need for photos I steal his camera.

So how is your back going? Getting better?