I booked a double dive with the Eaglehawk Dive Centre (a great crew – here) and as the weather was a little unpredictable our destination would be decided once we were out to sea. There were three other scuba divers, Richard and Diane (website - here) and Tal plus crew. We made our way out of Pirates Bay and headed south, we decided to take a chance and see if the weather would let us into the kelp forest in Fortesque Bay. Fortunately the seas were on our side and we made it.

As it was my first dive with a big camera I was a little apprehensive. We geared up jumped into the water and the camera was handed to me and I started to panic. How was I supposed to concentrate on my descent, watch my gauge, deflate my BCD, keep hold of the camera and watch my buddy all at the same time?  - it was all a bit too much for me so at about 4 meters I decided to return to the surface and return the camera to its crate. I calmed myself down and decided to just enjoy the dive – Meeting my buddy (Tal) at the bottom we made our way through the forest. Swimming between the 15 metre tall trunks of the giant kelp and observing all the critters that make this place their home - it wasn't too long before I started to regret my decision to return the camera to the boat! Anyway we had a great dive and i started to devise a scheme for the next dive and actually getting my camera under the water!

After a snack (packet soup never tasted so good!) we made our way north to find a dive site where we were almost guaranteed to find a dragon! I had a reassuring chat to Richard (a competent underwater photographer!) and decided that for the next dive I would simply ignore the camera until my descent was complete then start to fiddle around.

Tal (my dive buddy) gave me a few minutes head start so I didn’t feel any unnecessary pressure to get down quickly. The descent went well and camera didn’t flood, the dive was beautiful. Toward the end of our dive Tel managed to find a sea dragon and we both spent about ten minutes just watching it swimming around. Tasmania is an amazing place to dive.

I also learnt that lugging a camera around uses up way more air than usual - on our return to the boat, my tank was completely empty and Tal's was still over half full! Good job she was getting cold and wanted to come back anyhow! It was 13 degrees in the water.

What a day!

WOW! What an amazing couple of days I have had. As a reward for working so hard last week and on the weekend, I treated myself to a scuba dive with my new camera. As you may have read, I have taken it for a few snorkels but never actually deeper than a couple of metres. So it was time to put the gear through its paces.

So just when i thought things could not get any more (photographically) amazing, I went for a snorkel with my good friend Doug (website

here) to Tinderbox (I'm secretly trying to get him back into scuba so I am not without a dive buddy!). Anyhow our snorkel was so nice - hot and sunny - a perfect day.

After snorkeling about 300 metres along a beautiful shelf of rock we decided to turn around and head back - Doug was getting cold and I was having some camera issues. Steaming back to shore I didn't realise how far ahead from me Doug was getting and soon he was out of my sight. I looked around and couldn’t figure out why I couldn't see him after a few seconds I started to panic and quite quickly (if I’m being honest) worked my way to shore - I started to imagine the worst as I heard a big splash behind me.

I was starting to conjure up all sorts of images in my head and eventually I knew I was going to have to look under the water to see if he was around and what was going on. As a forced my head under the water a huge grey mass darted toward me and in an instant I though I was a shark’s next victim. Obviously not to be - Just a pod of curious dolphins, checking me out! A quick burst of photographs and they were gone. I couldn't swim fast enough to catch up to Doug and tell him what he had missed out on!

some of the images from the scuba dive and the snorkel are here

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