WARNING: LOTS OF IMAGES BELOW 🙂

The beach, the ocean, the sun & the underwater world is beautiful and as you start to spend more and more time amongst it you learn lots of things about the wildlife (in my case underwater wildlife), the environment and about the dangers that exist within this environment.

When the conditions are not good for diving or even swimming you learn to respect what nature is saying and not force the dive simply because you want to. You learn that touching animals and even the coral can effect the environment and try your best not to step on anything incase you break it, hurt it or kill it. You kind of feel sad when you see people handling marine life with their bare hands worrying that the bacteria or viruses on the hands might effect the animal in some negative way.

You understand that by being in the water even though its all fun and exciting, you are not in your normal habitat and there could be wild animals that may bite you, sting you or think that you are food. As a result you always keep a lookout and try to identify all these dangers because of that respect you have.

Sometimes though as you get used to the environment and spend more and more time you can forget the dangers and thats when you can get into trouble. Today was such a day and boy does it get scary !

So we decided to go to clovelly today. Gordon’s bay & clovelly are kind of boring when you have explored all the places but when you are not sure of the swell at some of the more difficult locations and really want to get into the water then Clovelly and Gordon’s bay are pretty much a sure thing, yeah the visibility can be terrible but at least its safe.

Before we get into the water we usually sit down for a while, (about 10-15 minutes) do some breathing exercises, maybe eat a banana and have some water just prior to the dive.  This time however we decided to walk around the corner of clovelly to shark bay just to see what the site looks like. Shark bay is (as far as I know) an advanced dive site and should only be taken for the more experienced divers.  However I just wanted to see what the place looked like so if I do ever come with some more senior divers I at least can imagine the site.

So we sat around the rocks around shark bay for a while and just took in the fresh air and the ocean spray that was making its way through the air after the waves crashed into the rocks and splashed the white wash all threw the air. I decided to try to take some photos of the waves crashing upon the rocks and actually got some really awesome shots (as you can see below).

Damir decided to get closer to the ledge to see the action in closer view and to also have some of the water spray on him. We had been there for about 15 – 20 minutes and I started taking snaps. As Damir walked closer to the cliff face a MASSIVE wave bigger then all the others that had come over the last 20 minutes crashed on the rocks and made a MASSIVE white wall of water that came right over the top of the cliff ! It threw water everywhere and Damir was about 2 meters from the edge. At this time, I was probably about 6 meters from the edge.

When the water came over the top and came back down over the rocks, it began to pull us back towards the edge of the cliff where there was a 3-4 meter drop into more rocks and heavy seas with strong swells. When the wave came over and made the white wall, Damir had his hands out like the chick from titanic but when he realised how much water was actually coming over he got on all fours and held onto the rocks as it pulled him closer to the ledge.

He was lucky, it didn’t pull him over the edge, but he was close, legs, hanging of the edge, but it did bang him up a bit and left some cuts on his leg. Goes to show that sometimes you can have a small lapse in concentration, take things for granted (because the last 20 minutes the waves where small so we assumed it was safe to go closer) and without warning things strike. He was bloody lucky and in usual Damir fashion he was talking it down saying things where OK, but he sh*t his pants 🙂 I could tell … 😛 I actually managed to get snaps of this event unfolding, it’s not a video (though a video would have been good) just a few pictures. Now I can appreciate how dangerous and insane rock fishing is, specially in unpredictable swells such as this.

Pictures of the event below .. (note, in the image second row, last column, Damir is lost somewhere in that whitewash just 2 meters from the edge of the cliff, When i saw that gush of water coming towards me i pissed my pants because this was just the start of the white wash :P)

Short clip of “Bluey” the famous blue grouper from the Clovelly beach pools …

After this little mishap, we went back into the water, took a nice dive around Gordon’s bay, avoided a swarm of blue bottles that seemed to be hanging around the rocky area of the bay and enjoyed the rest of the day.

We then went back to the clovelly pools and took some pictures of the famous blue grouper Bluey and a few other fish there. Never really took nice pictures at the clovelly pools and the wildlife is actually pretty nice, lots of coloured fish, saw a few sting rays and schools of tiny fish swimming together.

Next week if the weather is good, the plan is to dive north Maroubra beaches and check out the Hereward shipwreck which is about 50m’s of the shore. My new Cressi Gara Modular’s are also arriving this week so that should make the experience much better too …

Anyway, enjoy the pictures below of Clovelly