Dive 051
| Date | Jan 9, 2002-09:51 AM |
| Location: | S.S. Yongala - Coral Sea, Australia |
| Dive Shop | Mike Ball Dive Expaditions |
| Purpose | Recreation |
| Buddy | Mark Robinson |
| Exposure Suit | 3mm |
| Other Equipment | Video - wide angle lens |
| Weight | 12 |
| Viz | 60 |
| Max Depth | 58 |
| Start Air | 3010 |
| End Air | 900 |
| EAN | 0 |
| Minutes Under | 32 |
| Surface Interval | 1440 |
| Remarks |
INCREDIBLE!!!!!!
The best dive of my life so far. But this adventure is still young, and I have lots more dives to do.
We started out exiting from the port side of the ship. OK, so exiting the ship is no big deal, right? The guys on Mike Ball are incredible. We walked down to the platform and they put our fins on for us. They are very curtious and extreamly helpful.
After entering the water we grabbed onto a line that was hooked to the descent line. We had to hold onto the lines at all times because there was a good current ripping through the area. The swim to the descent line took about five minutes. When we got to the descent line we ended up taking a break to catch our breaths. During this break we looked down to see a school of long-finned bat fish (I think). I was impressed by this show, but little did I know what was in store for the wreck.
We descend. The bottom of the Yongala sits in about 90 feet of water. The top of the wreck is at about 50 feet. We went down on the front (stern?) and stayed around 50 feet the entire dive. It was truely amazing. There were fish everywhere! Little fish hanging out, big fish chasing and eating the little fish. We even saw a turtle munching on jellyfish that had gotten stuck on the wreck.
Usually I'm not that impressed with wreck dives. This one was different than any of the wreck dives I've done before. The big reason is that this one is more like a small reef than a wreck. There is so much coral and fish living on it that it is hard to tell it was once a man made structure. I guess the wrecks I've been diving have been too young for me to enjoy.
We ended up swimming about a third of the way down the wreck. The current was noticable at the front of the ship, but as we worked our way down it died off.
I took my video camera but forgot the color filter. I hope the video turns out decent, but even if does have a blue hue to it that will be ok. The subjects were incredible enough to stand on thier own.
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