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Dive Report: 18/1/98

Shiprock, Cronulla

CC 70mins at 18m - Air diluent


Diver: Scott

After returning to Sydney from the Gold Coast I now had a new breather, with electronics, and was keen to test it out on at least one shallow dive before using it on my regular deep dives. As Shiprock is one of the few shore dives in Sydney that gets deeper than 10 metres I decided to test it here. This site is also a marine reserve so the fixed growth is spectacular and the fish life is abundant even on OC.

Original image not recovered: ccrsrock.jpg
CCR diving at 'Shiprock' - Note the carpeting of fixed growth on the site, also 'No Bubbles!'

I only spent a short while in the shallows before descending the wall as there were lots of other divers about. There were divers everywhere and the vis was poor because of this so I swam off the wall to the bommies. The vis was a little better and the fishlife was spectacular, I had a large school Long Finned Pike hovering in the current next to me. The current was quite strong away from the wall which was ok because it gave me a chance to see how the PO2 would respond to hard swimming. After 70mins of playing around I headed back to shore.

I saw a number of things I had not encountered on OC at this site before such as:
Heaps of fish.
A huge moray swimming freely.
A numbray chasing some small bottom dwelling fish for dinner.
A large school of Goat fish.
A large black rock cod with a huge tail fin sticking out of its mouth. It looked like it had just caught a pike but by the size of the fin the pike would have been almost the size of the cod.

No wonder Rich Pyle likes RB's for catching fish.


These two cuttle fish were an inch from my mask for 5 mins because there is no noise or bubbles.

How the unit performed

Overall it performed well, the electronics worked without fault. It was easy to keep the PO2 at 1 and I was surprised how slowly metabolism effects the PO2 compared to changes in depth. Bouyancy was excellent, at one stage I was laying in mid water on my back and not moving, it was like laying on a bed as I watched the schools of fish hovering about.

At one stage I was exerting my self quite hard and could feel the CO2 building up so I had to slow my breathing to give the scrubber time to catch up. The WOB seemed a tad high at times also, possibly I had the bags overfilled which was exerting backpressure. I used only 50 bar from a 150 bar 15cft tank O2 and about the same of diluent, but most of that went into my drysuit which leaked like a pig. On CC I really felt no time pressure or pressure to watch my gas consumption when I encountered the current. I only turned back for shore when I got bored and could have stayed comfortably for hours, quite a change from an OC or even a SC dive at this site.

Ask the Backyard Boys