Diving at Byron Bay – sharks and turtles galore!

September 6th, 2002 at 12:00am

Well it’s Friday night in Byron Bay and most of the folks here at the Share House are ‘out on the town’ at one of the five bars on the main street. I’m still at home though, resting from a busy day, and trying to decide if I have the energy to go out and socialize. I was up early this morning to have a walk on the beach and then set out to Sundive to gear up for some diving today.

I had one dive, out to Julian Rocks, which is an outcropping of rocks visible from the beach at Byron Bay. There were 7 divers and 2 divemasters on the 10-minute boat ride out to the rock. In our group were 3 divers and one divemaster, Dr. Dave. It was an excellent dive. The four of us went down 15 meters and had a dive time of 49 minutes. It wasn’t a question of what we saw so much as what didn’t we see…it was nonstop sightings of cool stuff the entire dive. I lost count of wobbegongs (carpet sharks) after 20 – they were literally everywhere on the sandy bottom and laying on various rocks and corals. We saw 4 turtles – 1 hawksbill and 3 loggernecks – that was really, really cool. Then we saw a massive female grey nurse shark – over 3 meters long!! It really looked like a great white shark!

In addition to all of that we saw a moray eel, lionfish, lobster, cleaner shrimp, giant stingray, and many, many different types of fish. Really good. The only slightly bad thing is that the surf was really, really rough going out and back from the site – 2 people were hurling off the sides of the boat after the dive. I was feeling ill but was ok, yet I decided I didn’t want to do another dive today because once was enough on the boat for one day. I’ve got my second dive rescheduled for tomorrow morning.

Spent the rest of the day doing laundry, hanging out with folks here, checking email, and going out for a walk on the beach for sunset. Tonight should be an early night for me since I’m scheduled to do the 8am dive tomorrow morning but I will still go out to the Beach Hotel for one drink…

Sunset at Byron Bay

View from the lighthouse, with Step and Ek

Entry Filed under: Australia,Byron Bay,Diving