Diving Sydney and South West Rocks April 2007

As you all know Markus and I now live in Dee Why. We have also finally started diving in the weekends like we were hoping for. There are in fact quite a few interesting dive spots right where we live in Sydney. What we've found most supprising is the vast variety of marine life. Above all, we have seen many species we've never encountered before. My personal favourite if the Weedy Seadragon, which is on the picture above. As you can see it is about 20 cm long and has very cute mini fins which it uses to swim. It is a rather slow animal however. It's also very colourful but prefers to hang out in the sea weed.

Another favourite of ours is the cuttlefish. It looks a little bit like a mix between a squid and an elephant. The best thing about this fish is that it can change its colour to match the environment. It does however have a red base colour.

Our final favourite is part of the shark family. It does however not look that much like a shark and is a little difficult to spot. It is called a wobelligong shark.

There are also many other fish, such as rays, squids, smaller fish and the blue groupers. Some of the blue groupers are really friendly and after playing with a really big one for some time it followed us for the rest of our dive.

We spent easter at South West Rock, a little town about 6 hours drive north of Sydney. We went there with five other people from Manly Divecenter. The town was very nice and we had a lot of fun. We were unfortunately a little bit unfortunate with the weather and we had 30-40 knots wind and a 3 meter swell in our first day. We did not make it into the cave, which was our target and some people were even seasick under the water, as the waves seemed to be rather large there too.

I have to admit, I was also rather scared on the boat, as I believe the weather was soo bad the trip propably should have been cancelled. The second days the waves had however gone down to about two meters and we went to a place called Green Island, where we saw a lot of marine life and a turtle. The best dive was however on day three when we finally made it into the cave. It was definitely worth all the trouble!!! The cave was about 100 metres long and filled with fish, crayfish, rays and sharks. Additionally it was so long that there was no natural light in a very large part of it, which we found rather exciting. Coming out of the cave, there was a lot of grey nurse sharks circuling the exit. We loved the dive so much we did both dives there that day.