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).

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.

I just went for my BEST dive ever!!

Even the dive leader who’s been diving about 40 yrs said he’d give it a 9 out of 10.

We saw just about every fish that it’s possible to see at Julian Rocks, and soooo many and sooo BIG!!!

The first dive we went out from the rocks to a deeper dive site named Spot Ex. We’d only swam a couple of feet and saw this magnificent Black Cod, which was almost as long as I am tall ( about 5 foot ).

I scanned these photos in from a poster which came from the NSW department of Primary Industries. John shared Ruth’s camera with another guy, who’s going to send me the photos.

I can’t think about the first dive right now, because the second dive of the day was just soooo fantastic!!!

There was so many fish to see. The 7 of us descended down the anchor rope, then swam off to see a large Wobbegong, then another and another and another. They were everywhere, and John was busy taking photos of some of them. Someone else has the camera right now, so I can’t show them to you just yet.

There were 2 different brands of Wobbegongs – Spotted and Banded.

Then, I saw the First Grey Nurse Shark I’ve ever seen!! It was just gliding past us, and didn’t take any notice of all of us. We all just hovered astounded. No-one seemed to hear my exclamations. I just couldn’t believe my eyes.

And, he (or she) was giving this cute little fish a ride on his back – a Ramoray, so I was told later. The Shark was at least 10 foot long ( about 3 metres ). It was beautiful.

Then, there was another one just behind it.

Dave ( our dive leader) pointed upwards, and there was a school of little Bat Rays. We saw Blue Gropers ( they’re pretty common). Very pretty though – they look more purple than blue to me!

We saw some Clown Fish, Lion Fish, Anemones, Sweetlip fish, Jewfish.

On the way to the Cod Hole, we kept seeing Grey Nurse Sharks. They look more bluish, silver grey than the colour in this photo.

We arrived at the Cod Hole and 3 divers went in there while the rest of us waited (it was too small for all of us to fit). While waiting, we saw a school of King Fish and some Cod.

When it was our turn, I went in first and was intently looking at whatever Dave shone his torch on. One of the other divers tapped me on the shoulder, grinned and pointed down. About 1 foot below me, was a huge wobbegong, so I got out of his way before I stepped on him.

Later on, in the boat, two of the guys in the cod hole with me, said I touched the wobbegong with my hand ( I couldn’t feel it with my gloves on ). Gee, I wished they’d taken a photo of me touching a wobbegong!! They said he hardly flinched. Very laid back creatures!

There was another beauty of a Grey Nurse shark lurking around in the Cod hole.

I thought they were becoming extinct? How come we saw sooo many?? Imagine if the surfers out there near the shore new how many sharks we’d seen? They’d be racing out the water real fast.

Someone screams shark and the swimmers run out the water while all the divers race in!! It’s impossible for a Grey Nurse shark to “eat” a person or even bite a person because of the shape of it’s teeth! They can only eat fish small enough that can slide down all in one go!!

We also saw some Estuary Cod and many more fish. One day I’ll know all their names.

Oops, I think it was time to go back. John and I both only had 50 bar of air left and we’d all been down long enough. It was our second dive, the first dive was 23 metres and we had a fairly short surface interval.

We all ascended together, did our safety stop, and made our way to the boat. Jack from SunDive makes it really easy to get into the boat. He takes my BCD off while I’m in the water, and I just take my fins off and climb up the ladder. He even showed me how to take my fins off easily. Mine are the ones with the clips on the side, and they’re buggers to take off in the water, especially when it’s rough.

GREAT dive!! I can’t wait to go down to Byron Bay again.

We were all esctatic. Today, we dived with people from Scotland, another from Santa Barbara in California, and a lady from Dusseldorf in Germany.

I just went for my BEST dive ever!! Even the dive leader who’s been diving about 40 yrs said he’d give it a 9 out of 10.

We saw just about every fish that it’s possible to see at Julian Rocks, and soooo many and sooo BIG!!!

The first dive we went out from the rocks to a deeper dive site named Spot Ex. We’d only swam a couple of feet and saw this magnificent Black Cod, which was almost as long as I am tall ( about 5 foot ).

I scanned some photos in from a poster which came from the NSW department of Primary Industries. John shared Ruth’s camera with another guy, who’s going to send me the photos. More about a Scuba Diving Vacation at Byron Bay