- Tom Ryan's trip Dives 2007
Woo hoo, back in the tropics!! Now this is diving. Took a long boat to the dive site. Calm seas, like a pond and clear aqua blue green. Dove with Rene (Instructor and guide) and Lucy. Lucy was being assessed as part of her open water course while i tagged along with my camera. It's so lovely to have the minimum amount of gear on in the tropics and only 6.4Kg of weight. Heaven! Brought my camera along and took photos of Lucy and the many sea creatures swimming around us. Need to invest in an underwater strobe, my shots are missing out on all that colour.
After our first dive this morning we had sandwiches and drinks in the boat. As there were clear skies overhead and it was getting very hot we were dying to get back in for the second dive. After aout forty minutes of a surface interval we were back in the water. Lucy completed her practical assessment while i continued playing around with my camera. Took some video footage also which came out very well. Lovely two dives would highly recommend Rene and his company in Patong. Can't wait to get stuck into much more diving when i get back home. Note to self: Join a club!
2007-03-02 - Hastings Reef, Cairns, Australia
14m - 45 min - Dived with Ian from Tusa Dive
Overcast but with calm seas after the storm of the past couple of days. Took 1hr 40mins to get to the dive site (Hastings Reef, "Fish Bowl") by boat. Dove at high tide. There were four of us in our dive group and Ian, our guide, brought us on a guided tour of the reef. Brought my compact canon camera (S45) and its housing of course. Need to get a strobe for it as i am missing out on the wonderful colours of the reef. I got a few pretty good phots and can tweak them in photoshop to compensate fo the lack of light. There was a slight current running near the top of the reef so we stayed pretty much between the mid to bottom section. Hundreds of fish about. No sharks! (still looking forward to seeing one in it's natural habitat). Had a very enjoyable dive but to be honest the west coast of Ireland is just as spectacular.
Second dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Before diving i adjusted the flash setting on my camera to give off a stronger flash. Bad idea!! On this dive all the photos were washed out. Couldn't re-adjust the setting while diving. Lesson learned! There was more of a current to contend with on this site. Nice to drift along though! More gullies and valleys to swim through and much more of an interesting dive than this mornings dive. Mind you there was quite a lot of jellyfish about on the surface when we came up after the dive. Got stung on the face and neck but only slightly and it passed after a few seconds. Better control of air consumption on this dive and i played around with my balance and hovering techniques as i took photos. I nearly have it down to a fine art!
2007-03-10 - Wave Break Island, Gold Coast, Australia
11m - 38 min - Dived with Simon
After the boat dropped us off we had a bit of a surface swim to the start point of the dive. There was a very strong current to swim against but we made it ok. My reg freeflowed on the surface and i lost a bit of air but i finally got it under control and sorted the problem. Excellent dive once we got down to 11m and drifted along the side of a long rock face. After about ten minutes we came to the end of the rock face and we cut to our right and swam into a sheltered bay. The current dropped off dramatically and we explored the bay for the remainder of the dive. Simon (my guide) fed the fish which was cool and i got some excellent photos and video. Nice dive.
Excellent vis for Sandycove! Overcast and a bit choppy.
Tide on the way out. Vis ok at 2m. Took a few photos.
Low tide with a lot of seaweed. On the return leg of the dive it was interesting geting back to shore, shallow with lots of rocks under foot.
Very calm seas but the tide was running out. Low tide at 11:50 approx. Lovely comfortable dive. Glad to have my hood and gloves as the water temperature was quite cold.
Low tide, calm seas and very cold. Oh to have a drysuit!
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