Julian Rocks, Byron Bay

G’day, this is John writing. The great thing about diving down at Byron Bay is it’s always a relaxed and fun atmosphere with the friendly staff ready to jump in and lend a hand and, these guys are a mine of information on all the the local sealife.

Here we are loading up the boat ready for our first dive of the day to the Cod Hole at 9 a.m. New South Wales time ( 8 am our time).

All these photos are taken with the SeaLife DC550

Here we are at the dive site, that’s one of the divers with the skipper checking his air before he drops into the water. Julieanne’s just dropped backwards into the water ( really easy way to get in) and on her way over to the anchor chain. Here I am holding her camera til’ she gets to the anchor chain, I pointed it in the general direction and pushed the button, seeing all that water makes me want to jump in again.

All those bubbles at the front of the photo is someone down there looking to see what the viz is like. We’re all waiting for each other on the surface, it’s pretty choppy. We’re going to descend as a group, that way we all start off with the same amount of air.

Julieanne didn’t want to bounce around on the surface anymore, so we went down first.

Ok, here’s the gang coming down the anchor chain, one day I’m going to make some movies of our dive trips and while we’re all coming down the anchor chain I’ll have the mission impossible music in the background!!?? Maybe I’ve got a weird sense of humour but I think that’d be a laugh.

When we got to the bottom our old mate the Blue Groper was there to meet us as he has been the last few times, the last time he swam around Julieanne a couple of times almost touching her and then went right up to her mask to have a squizz and say g’day.

We saw hundreds of fish on the first dive to the Cod Hole, one of the best dives we’ve had at Byron.

Heading back to shore and the dive shop to prepare for our second dive, at
the time we weren’t sure where that would be? We beeped the horn on the boat to let all the surfers know we were there. There were lots that day because it’s still school hols!

The rest of these pictures were all taken on our second dive out to The Needles,

We saw lots of small Stingrays,

A massive grey coloured Ray just laying on the sand,(the Divemaster wasn’t able to identify that one)

Some huge Bullrays,the biggest I’ve seen, some must have been 8 feet across This particular one in the photo was actually in a large cave and Julieanne’s curiosity and camera fever got the better of her so she ‘had’ to go right up to the cave and get a good shot.

Next thing the Bullray decides it’s time to go cruisin’and glides out of the cave heading straight for our faithful underwater shutterbug.

I gotta hand it to you Julieanne, good reflexes!!, man I’ve never seen you move so fast!!!!!

Another Stringy cruisin’ by

Yep another Stingy goin’ swimabout, I took a photo of about five Stringrays all together in a semicircle having a debate about something fishy, but the shot didn’t turn out.

A real cute looking Starfish

What IS that?? not sure about that one? Julieanne here:-) That’s a Wobbegong John, can’t you tell by the colouring – that shot is a bit out of focus!

A Wobbegong Shark having a bit of a breather under a rock, I went around the other side and had a good look at him, he was quite big.

Some nice looking bright yellow something, as you can tell Julieanne and I are still learning about all the beautiful sealife.