During November and December I enjoyed 29 dives in Nelson Bay.
One of the highlights was a private boat dive with Mick Todd and Jake Miller to celebrate my 100th Day Underwater. That is an accumulated time underwater of 2,400 hours. Let’s Go Adventures’ Diveaway took us out to Tomaree Head, Port Stephens’ southern headland for a drift dive on the incoming current with Mary, Aaron and skipper Steve Hunter providing surface cover. The three of us had not done this dive before and did not know what to expect which of course made it very interesting. Steve dropped us into a quite rapid current and we quickly descended to the sea bed at a depth of 11 metres, deployed our SMB so the boat could follow us and then started drifting pretty quickly into the bay. Then we came up against a reversing or eddying current so our progress slowed dramatically. We had a sloping rock wall to our left and a sandy plain to our right. Now drifting quite slowly we looked in vain for some large predators, Jake and I ready to offer Mick to them. Another time then. After almost 50 minutes we came to much shallower water where we surfaced.
Thirteen other dives were dives at The Pipeline the best of which was an early morning dive with Bob Lewis when we photographed numerous marine species including an Anglerfish, known in the northern hemisphere as a Frogfish, and Blue ringed Octopus. Ten other dives were at Fly Point including dives with my stepson Aaron Royal who with the help of Jess Jones of Let’s Go Adventures had qualified as a PADI Open Water Diver and a family friend Alex Bruce-Smith. Three were at Sea Horse Gardens photographing in particular Eunice Worms and two at were at Little Beach.