At least one diver booked for Saturday rues the day he rescheduled and, as a consequence, missed everything that day!
One of the chief pleasures of diving in Sydney is not knowing what you will see. Saturday proved this in abundance. The icing of 'Wedding Cake' Island was, in reality, all underwater. A beautifully textured topography offered a lot to explore. And that exploration produced a turtle - not just any turtle but an unexpectedly large one with a carapace of about a metre long. It was deep asleep oblivious to all the excited attention it generated. So much admiration must have been tangible for it eventually woke up, pulled its large head out, literally from under a rock, and swam off to a more secluded part of the sea.
Wedding Cake was no 'one trick pony' even if it may have been a one turtle island on this particular day. We saw much more, including a school of about twenty Kingfish lazily swimming next to us.
After all this, it did not seem possible, let alone likely, that we would encounter more heart stopping scenes - at least not in a single day. We had just had more than our fair share of excitement. Yet to prove this thought wrong, once back on the boat, dolphins suddenly appeared, almost as if to say goodbye. It's worth mentioning here, that only two or three weeks ago, about a dozen dolphins played happily next to and near to the boat for at least 20 minutes during our surface interval. You simply never know what you will see in Sydney!
Leaving Wedding Cake, we slowly made our way back passing alongside magnificent ochre stained cliffs. I've often thought people who do the coastal walk from say Coogee to Bondi are lucky - but not nearly as lucky as those who observe it from the sea.
We soon spied a seal, then another, and yet more: all in different states of mind: whether to laze in the sun or jump in the sea? Only one seal seemed interested in the latter - teetering at the edge of the rock platform. Two seals had climbed up high, to some sort of watch-tower position on a ledge on the cliff. Climbing up seemed so much easier than working out how to get down - especially with no hands to assist with that job.
We decided that the strategy we had used previously and successfully would be used again. When all the divers were in the water, we dropped below the surface with the intention of stealth-like coming up just under the rock ledge. Our strategy of surprise was, however, foiled by a very large seal who had the same idea. Seal-human cerebral synchronicity? Close to the ledge, a type of underwater superman flew straight past us, then again, and again and again. So close was he that at one point he brushed past me only to all of a sudden stop and look back to see that I wasn't hurt (or to know what/who he had touched). His big black eyes beamed and then looked us up and down and seemed to encourage us to join in all the fun. The other seals understood his meaning and soon we had several seals twisting and turning, doing loops, and all sorts of underwater gymnastics. Often they would simply hover next to us or directly above us. Their effort to encourage us to join in the frenzied activity saw one or two divers turning upside down in order to mimic the unspoken instructions from these seals. The scene was glorious. The seals modelled themselves in so many ways - all of which were admirable. We saw seals silhouetted in the white froth of water next to the rock ledge, shoot by like an underwater rocket, do corkscrew turns right next to us, and playfully bite the fins of one of the divers! And, of course, play with each other. All of which was exhilarating as it was surreal. After more than half an hour of this, I had to drag my divers away so that they were able to explore the amazing underwater landscape at this dive site. Caves, canyons, ravines, and so on, offer a soothing post-seal dive experience, especially when a large school of One Spot Pullers creates a Harbour Bridge effect directly in front of us as they fanned outward from a round-shaped reef outcrop.
We had now reached the end of our dive having discovered that diving is not simply encountering the unexpected - it's also to go beyond what one can reasonably imagine. In one morning's diving, nobody could have expected, let alone imagined, what we had experienced. When told just a few of the things we saw, the diver who had rescheduled asked: "you're winding me up"? It was beyond what he had imagined possible. This is why I dive every week in Sydney - you never know what you will see or what you will experience! Oh, and I forgot to mention the Bull Ray that made an appearance as well!
Eric W.
Divemaster Sealife V