Dive 072
| Date | Jan 15, 2002-07:37 AM |
| Location: | S.S. Yongala - Coral Sea, Australia |
| Dive Shop | Mike Ball |
| Purpose | Naturalist Dive 2 |
| Buddy | Kerrin Jones |
| Exposure Suit | 3mm |
| Other Equipment | video with lens |
| Weight | 12 |
| Viz | 50 |
| Max Depth | 95 |
| Start Air | 3010 |
| End Air | 320 |
| EAN | 21 |
| Minutes Under | 36 |
| Surface Interval | 859 |
| Remarks |
Mark had an ear ache, so he stayed up for this one. Kerrin said he would go down on, I mean with me. We decided to use this for my second and final naturalist dive. I was supposed to look for examples of relationships between animals down there. Predetor/prey and symbiosis (three type: mutualism, one benefits while the other is neither harmed nor benefits, and parasitism).
When we went down we immediately saw a bait fish school with some bigger fish swimming through trying to catch a quick breakfast. Predetor/prey relationship there. Next we went down to the sand to look around there. Kerrin found a patch of anemone with some anemone shrimp dancing around in it. He claims that before I got there there was a fish getting serviced by the shrimp. I believe him. Maybe.
Anyway, while we were out there we saw a sea snake swimming around. I chased him with my camera trying to get that great video which I'm not famous for yet. I tried to do a lead shot, where I'm swimming in front of the snake. This would have worked good if I did a better job. I was having a little trouble keeping the camera in the right position. At one point I ended up with the camera (and snake) between my legs. I got some ok video, but nothing great. The snake was cruising along the bottom on the ocean looking in holes. It finally found a hole that it liked. The head went in and it stayed there for about a minute doing nothing. We left becuase it was deep (90 feet) and I had been diving all week. The snake looked like an olive snake to me, but Kerrin claims it wasn't. I believe him. Kinda.
Anyway, we started making our way up and to the other end of the wreck. Nothing pops out in my mind of what we saw. Same old, same old: lots of fish, great coral, and in general an incredible dive.
I ended up using some of Kerrin's air on the 30 foot safety stop. At the beginning of the dive we went to the sand where there wasn't much current. Then we swam to the other side of the wreck (going with the current) and rising towards the top of the wreck. The current picked up as we came up in depth. By the time we were at the top of the wreck the current was kicking pretty hard. It was a big pain in the ass to drag my video back to the correct end of the wreck. I got to the ascent line with about 650psi in my tank. I wanted 800. We went up and stoped at 30 feet for our first safety stop. Kerrin looked at my gague and handed me his second stage. When it was time to go back up I used my own reg (hard to move around with someone (me) on your back (Kerrin's). We did another safety stop at 15 feet, where I breathed my own air. The surface swim back to the boat was only a few feet, so that was no problem.
| Previous Dive | • | Table Of Contents | • | Next Dive |
This page written by Dive Log. A Macintosh program by Chris Cohoon