Bare Island South Western Side 12th January 2008

Dive No. 289. 10.45 am, 17 degrees, 54 mins, 15.2 max, 8.8 av. A huge group at D2K needed two DMs: Dave and Leeza. Bare Island was packed to the rafters with divers (the gusty nor’easter must have made conditions at other favourite diving haunts, like Fairy Bower, too difficult). Liz, Sharon, Carolyn and I formed a group and set off, entering at the south-west entrance. The tide was high and the swell negligible which made the entrance easy. We descended over lush kelp beds to a beautiful expanse of sponge garden extending to the edge of visibility. The water temperature, 22 degrees on the surface, plunged to 17 (16 on Caroline's and Sharon’s computers) but the vis was fantastic, perhaps 15 metres. There wasn’t much fauna around all this lovely “flora” though we came across a large school of bullseyes accompanied by a school of small yellowtail (they don’t get very big here as it’s not a marine sanctuary like Fairy Bower). At 15 metres we hit the sandy bottom with a couple of weedy sea dragons patrolling and it seemed that the featureless sand was stretching into oblivion to the north and east, which made me slightly perplexed and doubting of my up-to-then impeccable navigational skills, because I assumed we'd hit the usual reef but coming from the other direction. I pointed us due east, figuring that we had to reach a reef or land at least that way and eventually we came across some bare and vertical rocks and some other divers. The water warmed up and the vis went down and I was still puzzled as to how we’d missed the usual reef we dive on the western side. My reckoning was that we would come across that reef if we headed north and north-east from our entry. As we neared shore, we practiced safety-sausage deployment for a while, often getting tangled up with the rope (we’ll have to keep trying to perfect our technique!).