Location: Byron Bay – Julian Rocks
Scuba Diving – Not for everyone. Definitely for me.
Brief overview:
We’re given the choice of four free trips that are included in our study abroad “package”. These consisted of scuba diving, Frasier Island, Surf Safari, and The Outback. I obviously chose the latter however I was very interested in the outback trip. I just decided I didn’t want to have to spend an additional 400$ for the plane ticket to the center of Oz. Surfing was something I figured I’d get a chance to do at any point during the trip, I could take lessons when needed and didn’t really need to spend a week learning the ropes. Our diving course consisted of two days of in class video orientation, quizzes, study guides, and basic scuba instructions along with confined diving in their small pool. The last two days we would make a total of four dives, two a day starting early in the morning(which I will later learn is an adequate amount of ocean time, diving exhausts you quite quickly). Breakfast and dinner were supplied, lunch we fended for ourselves. Subway fit the bill, cheap and filling. Our dive center was called Sundive which was conveniently located right next to our hostel, close enough to share a swimming pool. Sundive carried a great atmosphere, the instructors were extremely entertaining and made both the in class certification “lectures” and the actual Julian Rock dives enjoyable for everyone. Rob gave us most of our in class instructions along with Jon, Pete gave us most of our confined pool lessons and dove with us out at the Julian Rocks A fair few of the nights we ended up meeting up with them at one of the local pubs for a couple beers. I came out of this weekend PADI certified meaning I can dive anywhere in the world up to 18m/60ft deep without an instructor present.
Friday / Saturday –
I’m going to lump these days together because they primarily consisted of boring, uneventful, in class training with the exception of confined pool dives. The biggest hurdle with diving was wrapping my head around the concept that I’m physically capable of breathing underwater with the regulator in my mouth. Breathing in and dipping your head underwater was easy, its trying to convince yourself that you’re not going to drowned after you can no longer hold your breath. The first couple days, I can’t vouch for everyone, I went through the air in my tank pretty fast. The object is to relax your body, make slow, steady movements, and keep in mind that no matter if your mask gets filled with water or if you get tangled, you can still breathe if you have your regulator in. The first two pool sessions only made us more excited for the actual dives taking place Sunday/Monday. Our days started at 8:30am, broke for lunch around 11-noon, and then continued on until 3:30-4pm in the later afternoon. As I said before, diving isn’t for everyone, the first day we had two people end up dropping from the program. One due to equalization problems with his ears and the other due to unknown reasons. And then there was seven. Which leads us to our dive group. Our dive group consisted of a German couple studying at Tweed Heads (Anna and Kyril), a gent from Amsterdam who was also studying in Australia (Dave), and four of us from SCU. Team Europe and Team America. The first night we ate at The Rails pub/restaurant. Me and my dive partner Derek arrive a little early to grab a few beers with our dive instructors and then proceeded to scarf up a massive meal once everyone else arrived. I’d be surprised if any of us stayed up any later then 11pm any of the nights we were there. We’d be lucky if we made it past 10:30.
Sunday 26th –
Our First Two Dives.
Our first dive was at 8:30 but we had to arrive at 7:30 to prep all our gear, load up the boat, and discuss our dive plan. Our second was at 1:00 after a short break for lunch. The weather was beautiful but very windy when we launched the boat through the surf. The boat rides out/back easily took second place in the Most Enjoyable Part Of Scuba Diving category. Massive swells and gorgeous 360 view of Byron. Our first, and second, dive literally felt like they lasted 5 minutes tops. There was so much going through my head with equalizing my ears, telling myself that breathing underwater is normal, keeping myself neutrally buoyant so as not to hit the bottom nor float to the surface, making sure to be close to our dive buddy, keeping the instructor in view, trying to take in the sites, on top of practicing skills learned in class such as half mask flood, what happens if you run out of air, clearing your regulator if it gets knocked out etc etc. Did I mention continuously having to equalize my ears? I did well with that the first two dives, the second day equalizing got more difficult. I can’t really recall a whole lot about the first few dives. I remember seeing large amounts of Wobbegong sharks, they have this camo style skin that blends well into the coral on the bottom. Not to worry, they have a mouth the size of a golf ball and primarily eat algae. I believe our instructor said he counted 40+, I just assumed that everyone I saw was one I saw previously because to me it just seemed as if we were moving in circles. Overlapping the same area several times. Apparently we went in a figure 8 though. Shows how poor my senses were to begin with. The second dive we saw a sleeping sea turtle, several puffer fish, and a couple Cuddle Fish. The cuddle fish were quite interesting, when scared off the coral they looked like any other fish, solid in color, however once they descended toward the coral their skin color would change to match that of the coral. It was very interesting to watch. Our first dive lasted 32 minutes, our second one lasted 30 minutes. We only dove down a max depth of 12 meters on these first few, we’d later progress to 18m on our second day.
Sunday 27th –
Our Last Two Dives.
These dives are where all my picture come from. I borrowed Matt’s camera and his underwater housing he had for it. Thinking back it would have been nice to bring the camera on the first two dives as well, the sea turtle would have made for a good close up along with a couple of the Wobbegong Sharks. I managed to snag a few of both but it was far more difficult to get one of the sea turtle while it was moving. That was probably the biggest issue when taking pictures. The only way to get a decent photo was to put the camera on underwater macro settings and get as close to the fish as possible, hoping that the flash would illuminate it enough to not get a blurry photo. The fish can sense your anxiety level so you really had to make a conscience effort to relax yourself and calmly move toward your victim of choice. These dives lasted considerably longer. Most of the worries and thoughts skipping through my head during the first few dives came as second nature, everyone was able to conserve their oxygen longer, and I was much more alert to what was happening around me rather then concentrating on where I was. On this dive we got a chance to see a couple Leopard Sharks (one I got several good photos of) a couple massive eagle rays, another sea turtle, a couple lion fish, some yellow tailed kingfish, several more puffer fish, and Wobbegong’s everywhere. Our last couple dives lasted 36 minutes and 42 minutes respectively I if I remember right with a total of 140 minutes underwater that weekend.
Hope I didn’t hop around to much, it was just so much to take in its hard to put it all out in words with limited visuals. I’m not really sure if I covered everything either. Bellow you’ll find several photos from our dive I’ve uploaded along with a link to a site where I’ve hosted all of them. I got a little click happy with the digital camera so I’m unable to post all of them here.
On a related side note, Anna (from team Germany) was originally born in Croatia and she said that there’s several phenomenal diving locations around there. I believe Pam and Mary wanted to visit there, maybe I’ll have to tag along!
Until next time.
http://drop.io/scubajulianrocks
^^ Contains all 210 good, bad, and ugly photos taken in a .zip doc
[wont let me post pictures as of currently, will post asap]
