Back at work.

Unfortunately it happens to all of us at some point, yes we need to work to earn a living. I am now back at work for the next 3 weeks. I have a few things planned on my next break, which coincides with school holidays so my son will more than likely feature in the next lot of entries. We have at least 1 trip away planned and hopefully we can pull off 2 trips but we will see what the weather throws at us. Stay tuned.

The Grey Suited Taxman strikes.

I had Planned to go out to The FAD's on Friday with Simon, Darnie and Olivier but the wind was not very kind to us and we ended up out at Rottnest instead. We dived the Northwest end of the island in 2 spots and came up blank. With the wind dropping a little we decided to try the Southwest end instead and moved the boat. After getting a good berley trail going we started to see a few fish first off a lone Mackerel then a pair, one of which Olivier managed to land. Then a school of maybe 20 fish ranging between 15-35kg swam directly beneath me. I grabbed a quick breath and dived directly on top of a large fish. I silently dropped down slightly to one side of the fish and lined up a good holding shot right in the middle and fired. My gun was instantly torn out of my hand and I realized I had got a muzzle wrap. Thankfully I had clipped my gun on to my belt reel and the reel squealed, paying out line as the fish tore off into the distance. Then the reel jammed up dragging me through the water, thankfully I had about 30 meters of line out and was able to swim to the surface. The fish then put on a massive power run and right on its tail was a big Grey Nurse Shark about 3 meters long. I didn't have the reel sorted out yet and could not let the fish run freely, this gave the shark the advantage and it grabbed the fish and chomped off about 2ft of its tail. Darnie had also speared a fish from the same school and the shark turned it's attention to his fish giving me a chance to secure mine before it could take another bite. Once it realized my fish was getting away it gave up on Darnie's fish and came back for some more of mine but was too late, I already had hold of the fish and was not giving it up.

Darnie landed his fish no problem and then added a small Kingfish to the boat. We saw 2 more sharks that afternoon a Hammerhead and a Tiger Shark both about 3mt long but they gave us no trouble. Both had a bit of a look at my flasher but that was all the interest they paid us.

Shortly after 1pm the wind changed and started blowing from the Southwest, signaling it was time to head towards home.

A nice relaxing day on the water.

After not being able to find anyone to dive with for over a week I decided stuff it I am going out anyway. The weather looked reasonable with very light winds forecast all day, so after dropping my son at school I hitched up the boat and went. I launched at Ocean Reef Marina and a short 20 minutes later was trying to secure some Buff for berley. I bumped into a small Whaler Shark in the whitewash and he bolted as soon as he saw me. So after securing 3 buff and seeing nothing else of note I headed to a deeper ledge to try and berley up a Mackerel or 2.
After seeing nothing at all for over an hour I decided to move to another spot and try and get a WA Jewfish for dinner. So once moved I commenced to berley up again, within 5 minutes I had a reasonable sized Samson swimming in the Berley trail. Another 5 minutes and I had a large Samson join in on the action, so I decided I would take the larger one of the 2. My neighbors love making fish curry and had asked me for a Samson next time I saw one, this fish would suit them perfectly.
After a short but spirited fight I had the fish landed and in the boat, next thing was a Jewfish for myself. I swam along a sand edge where I quite often see them and sure enough I found 3 staking out a small gully.
Two of them would not make the legal size of 50cm  but the 3rd would for sure, so I silently dropped down on the fish and secured him with a well placed shot. A nice Jewfish and bottle of wine for diner, what more could one ask for, Oh yeah someone to dive with.

Samson Fish and Jewfish.

Went looking for lead sinkers found a brass canon?

The last few days have not been too good so I went out this morning to try and find a bunch of old lead fishing sinkers to melt and cast weights from. I went to Trigg beach and jumped into an area known as the Blue Hole. The Blue Hole is locally famous due to a series of tragic drownings in the late 40's and early 50's most notably those of a nun sister Mary Chrysostom and her would be rescuer Fred Floyd. These drownings prompted the formation of the Trigg Island Surf Lifesaving Club, and it is the clubs proud boast to have never lost a life in patrolled areas, no small achievement considering nearly 50% of all rescues in Western Australia are at Trigg Beach.  Both Sister Chrysostom and Fred Floyd have streets named in their honor.

Enough of the history lesson and back to the canon, I swam through the Blue Hole looking for lead fishing sinkers as the area is very popular with fishermen but could not find any, there was too much sand covering the underlying reef. I had a look for the ever present Tarwine, Herring and Tailor and found them no problem. The Tailor were where they always are just under the white water and the Herring were just a bit further out, the Tarwine they were on the gravel bottom in the surf zone looking for anything the surf churned up. I dived the back of the reef and checked all the exposed rock and came across an old rusty knife and then the small brass canon whilst trying to film Tarwine. It is only a small ornamental thing not a real canon, I whish I had found a real one though.

This find got me thinking, how the hell did the cannon end up where it was? I have found some pretty weird stuff under water over the years. Ranging from a sawn up firearm that the police were most interested in as the serial numbers were still readable and it wasn't even rusty yet, to hundreds of women's Panties and Bra's littering the bottom. Yes that was odd indeed, for now I will just add the canon to the collection of salvaged items that adorns a section of my display cabinet. 

Here is a picture of the canon on the beach and a video clip of where I found the canon have a look and tell me what is the weirdest thing you have found diving?

Diving the Islands around Esperance.

I have been away at work the last few weeks and didn't get a chance to post this before I went back, but here it is. I spent a few days on the far South Coast diving the Islands around Esperance. The visibility ranged from exceptional through to fair with 30mt visibility not uncommon. The fish life was amazing with loads of fish species not normally seen further west being far more common. There were large numbers of Magpie Perch, Harlequin, Queen Snapper, Black Drummer, Breaksea Cod and Blue Groper. Most dives I was surrounded by some of the biggest Sea Sweep I have ever seen, and the Groper were also constant companions being very curious as to what I was doing. I got some video and a few photos but spent most of the time just looking around and swimming the long edges of the Islands exploring new ground. There were plenty of seals on just about every Island and even a few pairs of Cape Barren Geese. Here is  short Video of some of the fish life around Mondrain Island one of the larger Islands.