The shark free shark dive

After a really crappy Sat, ie moving furniture and squabbling with friends and family, general irritability and all round go back to bed sort of day.. Sunday started a little grumpy but by the time we got to Abyss Diving, there was abuzz in the air. The three of us had been soo looking forwards to the Abyss shark dive and hence all fatigue was forgotten.

The email with the directions to the location of the boat were faulty as in there were spelling mistakes so Waze took us to Maroubra not Malabar but it was an easy fix. Heath and I disagreed on parking but thats because mostly I get stressed easily with Eastern Suburbs lack of parking. In the end I had to capitulate as, annoyingly, H was right. :( It was techinically an illigal park but it was the only option. We spread out across the grass with out stuff.




Prodive has been out already and came for a chat, stating they only saw one shark. BOO This location is a known nursery and everyone was expecting a lot of sharks,

We had to hike down the beack with full wetsuit, full kit plus an extra tank. Fabian offered to carry my extra tank (AW!)

Loading up the boat, it was a quick ride across to Magic Point.

I happily jumped in, but poor old Fanian seemed a tad slow today and started floating off to New Zealand before I managed to get him to the front od the boat. My normally enthusiatic scuba diving teen was lacking get up and go today,

Following the anchor line down to around 16m of water, there were school of Yellow tail. No ball of catfirsh and as Fabian stated more rocks than fish.
I got a tap on my shoulder and H had found a teasure.. Two octopus hiding under a rock near the nursery cave. COOL. I watched one of the Octopus for a while, it staring back at me,, we had a moment pondering the strangemess of each other,,Someone came up behind me and fluttered fingers in front of the ocropus and it emerged.. hesitantly..The octopus came out and turned black with anger/annoyance before heading off to a less populated space. The other octopus ignored us completely.






Thus ended dive 1. Very disappointing, No one shark, I did find a tooth but it was so small that I showed Fabian before letting it go.

Back on the boat, again I had to cajole Fabian into action to grab the drift road and take off his fins, He seemed absent. Hmm. During the dive he hadnot stuck with me as he always does. We had a talk on the boat. Absent divers are the ones killed if not careful. I was quite stern. Focus or stauyu on the boat.  He promised to be focused.  We sat around for 42 mins just talking, would you believe, about dive accidents,. and one young guy argued about smoking in the boat,. Dude.. gas tanks, petrol.. umm no. Long swim to beaches.

Dive two, we were looking for Leafy dragons amongst the weeds,. But again we were disapointed, I did find a soint Gurnard which the dive master had not seen before. ,H's partner knew the species but no one had seen one in the flesh. It was creepy and cool! "Walking" on its little spines..I was fascinted.









Honestly how cool is this fish!? And pretty.
Alas that was the highlight, Some tiny tiny jellysih but eh.. again more rocks than life out here.
Abuzz about the walking fish but disapointed about the lack of sharks, we headed for home. You should have seen the looks on the beach goers faces, a boat of black clad people, storming the beach. Priceless..

  "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields"

Giggle..

Hike back to the car, which did NOT have a parking ticket (PHEW) to have lunch put on by Abyss, which means rolls, peanut butter or vegimite, tomato soup and a jelly snake washed down with lemon corial., Always the same. I LOVE the rolls that they get,. Yum yum yum

rough looking

tired teen

Home, we set about wasjing all the gear, a job that i actually dont mind too much.. you get wet and when its super hot like today, its fun :) suds everywhere. 

I was in trouble after H went for a nap (geez old men) when the Grand final started for the NRL and F had wanted to be home.. H got up just in time and we headed for Fairfield. Fed the teen subway to say he had not been starved and dropped him off at his Nanna's house in time for the second half. 

Home was collapsing on the sofa until I had the strength to move.. Ugh.. , exhausting,