Dive 075
| Date | Jan 29, 2002-12:23 PM |
| Location: | Studio 1 - Deep Glen Bay, Tasmania |
| Dive Shop | Eaglehawk Dive Center |
| Purpose | Recreation - search for weedy dragon |
| Buddy | Some boat people |
| Exposure Suit | 7 mm with hood |
| Other Equipment | video with wide angle |
| Weight | 21 |
| Viz | 45 |
| Max Depth | 44 |
| Start Air | 3000 |
| End Air | 1120 |
| EAN | 0 |
| Minutes Under | 45 |
| Surface Interval | 89 |
| Remarks |
Mark was not feeling well, so he sat this dive out. I latched onto one of the other pairs for this dive.
This dive site was much better than the first one today. This site was a new growth kelp forest, which was something I really wanted to do in Tasmania. A while ago a storm had come and destroyed most of the old kelp forest, so what we saw was the new growth. We were thinking of going to a site with old growth in it, but the surf and current was too hard there. Here we were sheltered by the rocks.
We ended up swimming around and making lots of turns, until I finally lost sense of where we were. We came across a line in the water and when I looked up I was suprised to see the ship tied to it.
The kelp forest is like the underwater equivalent to a rainforest. The one we were at consisted mainly of lots of young kelp on the bottom of the sea floor. Every now and then a little bit of sand or rock would show itself from between the kelp. There were also a few scattered stalks of kelp shooting towards the surface. I think the longest of these that I saw was a 15 foot stalk which I used to help me with my safety stop.
Swimming around in the kelp was a lot of fun. It was very lush and felt healthy. I didn' see many fish swimming around. Most of the ones I did see were darting under the kelp for protection. I did see a cutting board shark chilling next to a rock. She might have been close to five feet.
Most of the divers had small tanks for this dive. I think I was the only one with a regular sized tank. When my two buddies were out of air we could see the other two divers. The guy leading us signaled to me that the two of them were going up and I could go pair up with the onther two divers. I agreed to that and swam over to the other two people. When I caught up with the other two divers they signaled to me that they were running out of air and needed to surface. A little annoying, because the swim between buddy pairs was over the same path I had to surface swim to get back to the boat.
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