After a trip over to Melbourne for work the winds were looking pretty calm, so decided to take a much overdue dive trip off Rottnest. Booked with Dolphin Scuba and we left Hillary's at around 9am Sunday morning. An interesting mix of guys on the boat, as they were running a tech course of advanced nitrox and decompression (still not convinced there is a real call for that unless you are a wreck junkie!).
I buddied up with two guys who had been out a lot and were the classic underwater photographers who jumped in the water and basically ignored each other for the whole dive, so I just hung around one of them, just in case. The first dive was more north-westerly of the island and a good dive with a lot more life than the in-shore reefs and better visibility although there was still a good swell coming through. The BIG downer was coming up and being told a Minkie Whale was swimming just around the boat and we missed it......
Second dive was better, over a good section of reef (Roe reef) that had some great swimthroughs and of course some of my favourite little critters, nudibranchs :) Including this tiny, tiny (approx 5mm long). Next time I have to take my camera! Dropped down straight to a scorpion fish too, just don't get too close. A good range of coral, sponges, ascidians and seaweeds hard to identify half of them. Several types of filefish, leatherjackets and some fun boxfish hiding under crevices.
Great just to be out on the boat out on the sea as well. Something very calming about it :)
Probably not going diving this weekend, looks like it's going to be golf with the lads!
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