Jan 31, 2006, 20:23
I've never been scuba diving, and have always had a mild fear of the sea (creepie crawlies, sharks etc.) but it was my wife's birthday last week so I decided to give it a try for her present. 
We signed up for the "discover scuba" course, which is an introductory type course, with a theory lesson, followed by a practice session in the water, and then a 30-45 minute dive. The dive was off the Rye jetty (Mornington peninsular, about 1.5 hours south of Melbourne)
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My wife found it a bit difficult because the equipment was quite heavy - you've got a huge air tank strapped to your belt, and a weight belt around your waist to weigh you down in the water too. Once you're in the water, you don't feel the weight, but we had to walk down a long jetty ~500m with all this equipment on us. Underwater, it's all quite surreal. You don't hear a thing, except your own breathing, and thus have to communicate with hand signals. It's a totally alien environment and just being there is undescribably exciting.
Anyway, we were in a group of 4 (1 instructor and 1 other student), and we swam under the jetty all the way to the end. It was a beautiful, sunny day, so the conditions were quite bright and visibility underwater was good. We could see lots of colourful orangy coral growing on the stumps of the jetty, and other crustaceans all along the bottom. There were schools of little fish, star fish, puffer fish and we even caught a glimpse of a huge manta ray (quite rare, I hear)! We were at a depth of around 4-5 metres at the end, and at we could even see fishing lines from the people fishing off the jetty above...
So that was basically it - it doesn't sound like much, but it did give us a taste of scuba diving and a whole new experience. Apparently the area is home to some cool underwater stuff, such as a sunken submarine, weedy sea dragon colonies and other cool attractions. I definitely want to try it again - my wife doesn't - so I need to find another willing partner.
My only regret is not bringing my camera - I thought it would be pointless as I didn't have an underwater cam, but I guess I should have taken some pics of my wife and myself with all the gear on at least...
So.... anyone else been scuba diving before?
We signed up for the "discover scuba" course, which is an introductory type course, with a theory lesson, followed by a practice session in the water, and then a 30-45 minute dive. The dive was off the Rye jetty (Mornington peninsular, about 1.5 hours south of Melbourne)I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My wife found it a bit difficult because the equipment was quite heavy - you've got a huge air tank strapped to your belt, and a weight belt around your waist to weigh you down in the water too. Once you're in the water, you don't feel the weight, but we had to walk down a long jetty ~500m with all this equipment on us. Underwater, it's all quite surreal. You don't hear a thing, except your own breathing, and thus have to communicate with hand signals. It's a totally alien environment and just being there is undescribably exciting.
Anyway, we were in a group of 4 (1 instructor and 1 other student), and we swam under the jetty all the way to the end. It was a beautiful, sunny day, so the conditions were quite bright and visibility underwater was good. We could see lots of colourful orangy coral growing on the stumps of the jetty, and other crustaceans all along the bottom. There were schools of little fish, star fish, puffer fish and we even caught a glimpse of a huge manta ray (quite rare, I hear)! We were at a depth of around 4-5 metres at the end, and at we could even see fishing lines from the people fishing off the jetty above...
So that was basically it - it doesn't sound like much, but it did give us a taste of scuba diving and a whole new experience. Apparently the area is home to some cool underwater stuff, such as a sunken submarine, weedy sea dragon colonies and other cool attractions. I definitely want to try it again - my wife doesn't - so I need to find another willing partner.
My only regret is not bringing my camera - I thought it would be pointless as I didn't have an underwater cam, but I guess I should have taken some pics of my wife and myself with all the gear on at least...
So.... anyone else been scuba diving before?