I love this time of year. Anywhere in the world where I have travelled, Northern or Southern hemisphere, spring is always the most spectacular time of year.

The days a warm and balmy, the ocean is warming up every day, there are wonderfully dramatic afternoon thunderstorms and starry skies at night.

Flowers bloom, everything turns green, starts to grow and the days get longer and longer.

The highlight of the season for me is the beginning of the Humpback Whale southern migration, this means that suddenly there are whales and calves everywhere directly off our coast.

On Thursday last week, with a boatload of adventurous guests, I came across a mother and calf at the mouth of the Mooloolah River in amongst the boats coming and going from the harbour, she was so close to the spit and the beach that the surfers on Point Cartwright got a good look at her. This will happen all the time now that the mothers are bringing the calves close inshore to avoid the deeper water oceanic predators and keep their newborn babes in nice warm shallow water.

This year the people in the know have estimated that somewhere in the vicinity of seventeen thousand whales will swim past the coast. That means during the peak of the season, which is right now, more than three hundred whales will pass the Sunshine Coast every day. The population is increasing by ten percent every year on average so there are almost two thousand newborn calves swimming and playing in our water for the next four weeks.

Now is the time to come and see the whales!

We have just had a stretch of clear dry warm days so long it almost set a record in our meteorological history here in Queensland, so the conditions for whale watching are the best they have been in years.

I’ll say it again, I love this time of year.

We have had some awesome success in the last couple of weeks, the whales are plentiful and close by, they are easy to find and when we do approach them they have been friendly and curious.

If you want to see some of the footage we’ve shot from the last week, follow this link and make sure you hit the ‘Like’ button on your way out. 
Also, check out Adam Ravazzanos blog at Love and Water Photography to see the awesome images he's been shooting.

Because of the warm clean water we have also been doing plenty of snorkel trips out to Mudjimba Island and finding plenty of turtles on the reef. It’s such a beautiful spot to jump in and go for a swim that I don’t mind missing the whales. Although I have to confess that the whales are in so close we are finding them on the way to and from the island. The major difference is we cannot follow them that close inshore so we can’t combine the experiences, otherwise we would.

I have so much more to say about the adventures we’ve been having out there but I haven’t got the time so I apologise, we’re just too busy at the moment.

I haven’t even said anything about the sharks I found while diving with Ollie Fink from Knight Dive. Seven of them in the same spot, twice now. It’s a whole other story which will have to wait until next week.

Right now I have some whales to go find, so thanks for stopping by…

We have had a spectacular start to the 2012 humpback whale migratory season!

So good in fact that I am only now finding the time to write about what we’ve seen, so for those of you who have been waiting for this blog I sincerely apologise.

For the next five months an estimated 17000 whales will be swimming past the Sunshine Coast on a 25000 km round trip to mate and give birth, this is great news, the population is exploding. The best estimates claim a ten percent increase every year in the amount of whales we’re seeing. I have seen a lot of juveniles so far this season and even a couple of new born calves already.

We launched our whale watching season on the 16th of June with two full boat loads of eager guests. The whales are still a little further offshore than they will be in August, but they were definitely there and we managed to have some great encounters with several pods. The distance offshore is not a worry in our boat, it’s built to get out to the action and back in nice and quickly.

One of the other major benefits of our smaller fast boat is that it’s whale watching without the crowds. We take a maximum of twelve people per trip and our adventures are only three hours long.

Of course the most significant advantage of the smaller sized boat is the way the whales interact with it. They are simply not threatened by the vessel, and it seems to encourage them to become curious and approach the boat. Every single trip this year has resulted in a mugging, that is – a really close encounter with a humpback whale, close enough to touch.

Its an almost intimidating moment to start with and I have to confess that more than a few people have asked me nervously if we’ll be safe. I always reply YES! I’ve been following whales for fifteen years now and I’ve never been threatened by one. I’ve seen aggressive behaviour of course, during their mating runs when they are competing for the attention of a female they can become vicious and even murderous. When something like that happens our boat simply zips us off to a safe distance to watch the action.

Mostly the whales have come alongside and sprayed the boat with their breath and gently bobbed in the water next to us.

This last week we had several amazing encounters, the closest of which was so near that if I had reached out I could have touched the animal.

To put this in perspective for you, the animals we are chasing can grow to sixteen meters long and weigh in at an impressive sixty to sixty five tons. The boat is only eight and a half meters long and with everyone on board barely manages to scrape in at two and a half tons. When a calf is born they average out at the same weight and are only a meter or two shorter.

When a fully grown female humpback surfaces right next to the boat to breath it has to be the most awesome sound I have ever heard. They exchange almost five thousand litres of air in two seconds and the air rushes out of the twin blowholes at the same speeds as a jet turbine. This inevitably happens when the boat is stationary and the motors are off. It fills the world and overwhelms the senses.

It is for this reason we don’t encourage loud sounds on the boat while the whales are near, calm and quiet and still patience are the keys to these amazing encounters. The gasps of amazement and wonder and awe normally happen when the whale has ducked back underwater.

We had a special encounter with our friendly neighbourhood dolphin too. Patch is back! I named her for the distinctive large white scar on her caudal peduncle just above her tail. She obviously recognised us this time. We were watching a pair of migrating whales when she bounced up to the boat and started circling us. I leaned overboard and started slapping the surface. She became very excited and came right up to us, she stood on her tail and lifted her snout out of the water to say hello. I had to seriously resist the urge to touch her, instead pulling away whenever she nosed in.

It just does not get closer than this! There is no way to get closer to either of these fantastic crustaceans without actually getting wet, and even then you’re mostly limited by the visibility.

For photographic and filmed proof of the nearness and intimacy of the encounters check out our Facebook page, all the footage has been posted there. Don’t forget to hit the “Like” button on your way out.

This is such a wonderful business to be involved in and the adventure touches everybody who comes out with us. So if you’re keen to be amazed and have a ball of fun during the adventure make sure you give us a call on (07) 5326 1700 or go to www.liquidgetaway.com.au and book in.

Seating is limited (haha) so booking is essential.

Thanks for stopping by…

A short while ago I was contacted by the Mooloolaba chapter of the Sea Shepherd Society and asked to speak at one of their events at the University of the Sunshine Coast. They found me through an article in which I berated the use of shark nets on Australian beaches and expressed an interest in my opinion on the matter. I did some research on the subject and came up with some interesting facts, The following is a transcript of what I spoke about:

Hi

My name is Brett Bam. I own a tourism business here on the Sunshine Coast called Liquid Getaway.

We run whale watching trips during the winter migration season and snorkel trips, dolphin encounters and adventure rides for the rest of the year.

I am an open water scuba instructor and a commercial diver. As a result I am out on the ocean almost every day either driving a boat or diving in the water.

I have been in this industry for 15 years and I’ve worked in three different oceans across the world.

I’m also a surfer.

I have spent a lot of time in the water swimming with sharks. I’ve swum with most species which occur here in Australian water and I’ve watched them display a wide variety of behaviour. I think sharks are beautiful intelligent creatures who are vitally important to the health of the oceans.

I’m here today to talk about the shark control program initiated by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries.

In 1935, as an answer to an unfortunate run of shark attacks the government put out a call to the public to come up with ideas on how to control sharks on swimming beaches.

One of the more interesting ideas was to place machine guns on headlands and let the public shoot them out of the water. Imagine the picture, kids building sandcastles, surfers paddling out, families enjoying the sunshine, all watched over by mounted machine gun turrets available to every person who saw a shark! Ha!

We should probably be happy that the suggestion they eventually decided to run with was the placing of nets in the water on the more popular beaches.

Shark nets are used only in Queensland and New South Wales. Internationally, shark nets are used in Hong Kong, Hawaii, New Zealand and South Africa.

They were installed along the Queensland coast in 1975. This program is still in effect today with 85 nets in Queensland of which 23 are located here on the Sunshine Coast where there has never been a recorded shark attack, EVER.

The nets are straight rectangular pieces of netting 186 meters long and 6 meters wide. They are suspended in the water between 3 bright yellow marker buoys. The mesh is 500mm wide and is designed to catch larger prey while smaller fish are unaffected.

The nets are designed to catch sharks in excess of 2 meters; this is the size of shark which is deemed large enough to pose a significant risk to humans.

So far this year the nets have caught 392 sharks in Queensland. Of these only 170 have been over 2 meters long. Almost half of the sharks caught in the nets are not dangerous to humans.

The express purpose of shark nets is to kill sharks. The idea is that the less sharks there are in the water, the smaller chance we have of being attacked while we are swimming in the sea.

Beach nets are not installed to prevent sharks and people interacting. Nets were originally used to cull shark populations so there would be fewer sharks and therefore fewer shark alarms, and on tourist filled beaches it is the shark alarms which the government is more interested in stopping.

Now, I understand that people do not want to be eaten by sharks. I can’t think of a worse way to die than being eaten alive.

However the effectiveness of these nets is in wide dispute. The report of shark bite incidents from 1937-2008 showed that of the 38 shark attacks recorded in the state, 24 of them,  which is 63%, took place at netted beaches.

The environment Minister and Department of primary industries correctly point out that there has been only one fatality at a netted beach (1951 in NSW) under this program.

But attributing low fatality rates to beach nets is questionable. Internationally, fatality rates from shark bites have declined dramatically for all shark control methods, including doing nothing. I’ll say it again. In the past few decades, shark attacks are declining all across the world!

Human beings are NOT part of a sharks food chain. We do not register as food to them. If sharks were interested in eating us, we would not be able to put our collective big toe into the ocean without it being torn off.

Most shark attacks are a single bite. The shark doesn’t even remove much of the flesh, it grabs and then lets go, which leads me to think we must taste terrible to them.

Irish trauma researcher David Caldicott published a study in 2001 showing the survival rate for shark bites is 80%, due to better on-scene treatment and antibiotics. The leading reason for fatalities was blood loss and the leading cause of attacks on beaches was mistaken identity.

According to the Australian Shark Attack File there have been 756 attacks since 1791, of those 192 were fatal. In the last 50 years there have been 53 recorded fatalities, which gives us an average of 1.04 deaths per year due to shark attacks on Australian swimming beaches, and even that is all over Australia, not just here in Queensland and NSW where the nets are in use. Just to place that in perspective, there are an average of 95 deaths a year due to bee stings, and worldwide 700 people are killed by falling coconuts every year.

There are many reasons for shark attacks in Australia, historically many of them were not in the surf but in deeper water, a surprising number of them happened on a fishing boat after the shark had been dragged aboard and let loose on the deck, funny enough, this is called a provoked attack.

A large number of the attacks recorded in the Australian shark attack file were during World War Two. Deep water sharks like the Oceanic White Tip had a field day when ships sank out at sea, contributing largely to that number of 756 attacks. This brings the chances of being attacked while swimming or surfing down dramatically whether there are nets or not.

Between 1975 and 2011, 13 900 sharks were killed in nets and drumlines. More than half of those sharks are not regarded as dangerous or targeted species. Over the same period 68 233 other marine animals were killed including dugongs, turtles, rays, marlin, sailfish, dolphins and whales

The target species for the shark control programs are the great white shark, the tiger shark and the bull shark. However due to the white shark being a protected species, it must by law be released if found alive in shark nets.

These nets are killing vulnerable and protected species such as the grey nurse shark and the white pointer. The grey nurse shark is listed as a critically endangered species. Out of all the 166 species of sharks in Australian water there are only three which have proven dangerous, the white pointer (which isn’t common in Queensland water) the tiger shark and the bull shark. Most species of sharks will never even approach a human and are completely harmless.

In 2009 here in Queensland, 16 dolphins, 1 dugong and 6 humpback whales were caught in the nets along our coast.

So far this year, 4 humpback whales have been caught in the nets, all were released safely with the exception of one. What is thought to be an adult whale tore a net on the Gold Coast in half and swam off, never to be seen again. The whale took the net with it obviously tangled up making its chances for survival slim to say the least.

 At the beginning of the 2011 whale migration season a humpback whale was found off Sydney with its left flipper tangled in a net it was dragging. The marker buoy for the net was still attached and from the scar tissue around the net and the deformed growth of the flipper the whale had been tangled for at least a year.

There are several misconceptions which affect public opinion of the shark nets.

The first is that the nets are a physical barrier which prevents sharks from reaching the swimming areas of the beach. This is not true; the nets are much smaller than people think and the sharks can swim under and around the nets, in fact almost half of the entanglements occur on the beach side of the nets.

The second is that the nets act as a deterrent to shark migration patterns and that the sharks actively avoid the nets. The reality is that some species of sharks, notably tiger sharks and bull sharks, which are the two more dangerous species in Queensland water are attracted by the scent of dead animals and the panicked thrashings and distress signals put out by a drowning animal. Most of the sharks are intelligent enough to avoid the nets once they have been perceived.

The third misconception is that the only good shark is a dead shark and the more caught in the nets the better.

The reality of this is that sharks have critically important roles in the marine ecosystem maintaining a balance in the food chain. Extinction or even significant reduction in population sizes will affect all the marine environment, and that includes commercial and recreational fishing as the system is thrown out of whack.

The fourth misconception is that if the nets were removed, shark attacks would rapidly increase. As I have already said, 63% of the shark attacks in Queensland have occurred at netted beaches, and also, shark attacks are becoming less and less common every year.

There are many animals which die in the nets every year, dolphins, whales, dugongs, manta rays, turtles, larger game fish like marlin and sail fish and tuna. Many of these animals such as the grey nurse shark, loggerhead turtles and dugongs are endangered or vulnerable.

The nets kill a massive amount of valuable marine wildlife in order to protect us from a small amount of dangerous sharks which are unlikely to attack humans anyway. Which brings us to the question, why are they still there?

One reason is for the benefits to tourism. The public’s ignorance leads them to believe that shark nets protect them. They are given a false sense of security when they see that sign on the beach saying “this beach is protected by shark nets.” If we suddenly remove all the shark nets it might have an impact on tourism in the area.

The nets are a hangover from a less enlightened era, a time when we knew far less about the oceans than we do now. Statistics have shown that the nets are indiscriminate killers which are causing a massive amount of damage to a delicate environment.

Australia has proven to be a country which is leading the way Internationally in ecological education and awareness. It is Australia that is leading the way in the fight against the Japanese whaling industry by taking the Japanese to the international court of the sea in order to stop their incursions into the Southern oceans once and for all.

We are now paying the worlds highest carbon tax, much to the horror of many.

The use of shark nets goes against every policy I have ever seen Australians enforce. I don’t understand why they still insist on using this expensive, barbaric and outdated system, especially when the only single benefit is the peace of mind of a few tourists who don’t know better anyway.

The money spent on the maintenance of the shark nets would be far better spent in education. Teaching people the simple facts of how to avoid a shark attack. Don’t swim at night, don’t swim in dirty water, don’t swim near a river mouth.

The surf lifesavers all across Queensland and NSW are well trained in shark spotting. We have all seen the results on Bondi Rescue when they chase sharks away from the beach using jetskis and even helicopters. These methods are far more effective than leaving a murderous machine in the water which does so much damage.

If we can’t get the government to remove the nets completely, maybe we can get them to at least remove the nets during the whale migration from May to November in order to stop the entanglements which happen every year. This is done in NSW, but not here in Queensland.

The best way for us to make an impact and to change the policies of the Department of Primary Industries is to go online onto Facebook or any one of the many websites which support it and sign our names to the petition to remove the shark nets from our beaches, for convienience sake here are two of the more relevant ones
www.removesharknets.com
www.saveourseas.com
I hope that all of you here consider doing this very soon, it will only take a few minutes of your time. Every vote counts. The sooner we get the nets out the more whales and dolphins and rays and turtles and endangered species we save.


Thanks for stopping by.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a shark in the surf.

I was paddling out of the white water when something large and grey flashed through a wave right in front of me.

I only saw it for a split second, but I knew immediately what it was.

I yelled “Shark!”, abandoned my ethics and my mates and I paddled frantically for the beach in a flat panic, it was every man for himself.

It was one of the longest swims of my life, every nerve was stretched wire-tight waiting for the jaws of death or worse to close on my legs or feet. When I finally reached the safety of the beach I found that I had started a mild stampede, the water was empty of surfers, every one of them had paddled in because of my shout!

All of a sudden we were all on dry land, dripping wet and clasping our boards like shields.

We all scanned the water for the offending animal to no avail. The traitorous thing had disappeared, and now all the boys on the beach were giving me the evil eye and muttering foul things under their breath. I lost confidence and suddenly doubted the evidence of my own eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, all the surfers were back in the water as if nothing happened, myself included, the only tarnish on the session was to my reputation.

We all know that feeling, the sudden onset of paranoia, the psychic flash that suddenly convinces you in the middle of a perfect set that there is a shark nearby and it is seriously considering taking a chunk of you for its lunch.

It is something that all surfers have to face, the possibility of encountering an animal that will eat you during the pursuit of the sport. It is what sets surfing aside, the impression that you share the water with a giant killing machine, the ultimate predator, and that we are slow, vulnerable relatively easy pickings for any shark that comes along.

Which leads me to the question, what are the actual chances of being attacked by a shark while surfing, or in fact being attacked by a shark at all?

The true statistic is impossible to come by because there is no way of knowing how many surfers there are in Australia. During my research, one tongue in cheek answer I found was “No more than 22 million”, which is just about the most accurate number available. Everyone in Australia will probably try surfing at least once in their life. Australia’s population is creeping steadily up toward 23 million souls, and 86% of those good folk live near the coast. If you factor in the tourists who come to enjoy our warm climate and clean oceans, the number of people swimming in our seas is staggering, in fact, according to the Taronga Zoo website 100 million people are in Australian water every year.

According to the Australian Shark Attack File there have been 756 attacks since 1791, of those 192 were fatal. In the last 50 years there have been 46 recorded fatalities, which is an average of 0.92 deaths a year due to shark attacks.

Less than 1 death a year out of the millions of people in the seas and rivers of Australia means I have a greater chance of winning the lottery than I do of being attacked by a shark, yay.

Just to place it in perspective, there is an average of 95 deaths a year due to bee stings, and worldwide 700 people are killed by falling coconuts every year. Peanuts are more dangerous.

In 1994 and 1995 5 people were killed by sharks while 27 were killed while rock fishing! Yet if you ask people which they would rather do, swim with a shark or fish from the rocks, most would say rock fishing without hesitation.

So how and why do people get attacked by sharks?

There are many reasons for shark attacks in Australia, historically many of them were not in the surf but in deeper waters, a surprising number of them happened on a fishing boat after the shark had been dragged aboard and let loose on the deck, (this is called a provoked attack, ha ha). A large number of the attacks were during World War Two. Deep water sharks like the Oceanic White Tip had a field day when ships sank out at sea. This brings the chances of being attacked in the surf down dramatically.

In the last seven months there have been four shark attacks in Western Australia giving it the dubious award of having the  worlds most dangerous beaches.

Australia has 35 000 kms of beaches with 166 species of sharks living in the water off those beaches. Most of these are completely harmless and would never bite anything as large and dangerous as Homo sapiens. The sharks to watch out for are well known, the white pointer or great white shark is the most famous, followed closely in notoriety by the tiger shark. These are the big boys of the ocean and are not to be trifled with under any circumstances. However, the most dangerous shark in Australia by far, is the bull shark. This is thought to be because the bull shark breeds contact with people than any other species.

Most news accounts have been over dramatised and sensationalised by the media. The public reaction is always one of mass horror and fascination which adds fear factor to the medias report. In other words, it’s not as bad as they make it out to be.

In almost every recorded attack by a shark in the surf, the shark grabbed with its mouth and then let go which indicates the shark is not biting to get food. Experts tell me that most shark bites in the surf result in single racking wounds which indicate defensive behaviour rather than aggressive. Sharks that hunt in the surf are in a very confusing environment. The water is shifting and moving and tumbling, it is laced with bubbles and sand. In the surf a hunting shark will bite something thinking it’s prey. When this happens to be a human it quickly realizes we are not something it wants to eat, so it lets go and swims away. In WA, the shark attacks which have resulted in fatalities are largely because the people involved were themselves hunting, on SCUBA. This strikes me as particularly dangerous behaviour. We would not walk into a lions den with meat strapped to our bodies and expect to come out, why then do divers expect to swim around shark infested water with dead fish in a catch bag and emerge safely?

Once you take into account all the facts, rather than just the sensational side of the story as told by fear mongering reporters, you begin to realise that sharks are specifically not hunters of men. If sharks really were man eaters, then men would not be able to surf or dive or even swim in the sea, because we would be constantly eaten by the oceans supreme predator.

In fact, the reverse is true. We prey on sharks, and kill them in their millions. Nobody knows what the exact figure is, but it is estimated to be in excess of 100 million sharks killed by humans every year. We kill them in a wide variety of cruel ways, the cruellest of which is by far – shark-finning. The sharks are ripped from the water, their fins are sliced off and the still living shark is cast back into the water, unable to swim, in great pain, and left to drown. The fins, which are no more than plain cartilage with no nutritional or chemical value whatsoever, are dried and turned into powder which is then used in shark fin soup.

Here in Australia, specifically in NSW and Queensland, we have shark nets which are part of the shark control program.

This is very dangerous behaviour for an environmentally enlightened society to undertake. We are causing a rather large dent in the worlds shark population. If we succeed in making the shark an endangered species (and they are literally racing towards extinction in this generation), we effectively remove the apex predator from the environment.

This has far reaching consequences.

The sharks stop hunting and populations that they previously kept in check rage out of control and decimate other populations further down the food chain.

This knock on effect will eventually have a dramatic influence on the oceans and could even lead to a complete collapse of the ecosystem. And we all know how dependent humans are on the oceans. We really need them to be healthy and productive and so something has to change.

As always, it starts with us and our attitude. We have to accept the shark as our friend, rather than as the terrible killer it has always been portrayed as. It is easy to turn the shark into a villain because they are hardly cute and cuddly animals, but they are in desperate need of our protection.

During the course of writing this article I made contact with one of the world leaders in shark research, South African Mark Addison. He has spent decades swimming with sharks. (For some awesome footage, check out “freediving with tiger sharks” on you tube, that’s him.) He has swum and touched and interacted with hundreds of massive sharks. His predominant attitude is one of awe and amazement, not fear. He regards sharks as beautiful and essential, something to be treasured and saved.

Sharks have no animosity towards humans, they are quite indifferent to us.

So, to answer the question, what are the actual chances of being attacked in the water?

Not likely, mate! Surfers are actually quite safe from sharks, the fish is a far better swimmer, far more aware of its environment, and far more likely to avoid us than bite us. So, the next time I see a shark in the surf, I plan to remain calm and let the animal swim past on its way. I’m going to look at the detail and see what kind of shark it is. I will appreciate it as a miraculous creature rather than fear it and run from it in blind panic. After all, if I surf three times a week, I'm in the water 150 times a year, this means  my chances are something like 1 in 666,666.667 of being killed by a shark, and I’ll take those odds any day.

                                                                                                                            

As I write this I’m sitting in a classroom. I’m in Carbrook which is on the Gold Coast in Queensland Australia, and I’m attending an instructors course in Recreational Marine Drivers Licences and Personal Water Craft licences with Gary Mc Connell, the owner of All About Boat and Jet Ski Licences and one of the founders of BoatSafe Training Association of Queensland. It’s one of my final days so after a long time of working towards this goal I’m finally here, near the end, it’s a good feeling, the reward of long effort, satisfying.

In the next few weeks, Liquid getaway will kick off our own BoatSafe approved boat and Jet Ski licences. It’s not our usual game to be sure, but I am still very excited by this new venture, mainly because it doesn’t rely on us waiting for the rain to stop.

I’ve been watching the rain fall here on the Sunshine Coast all summer now, as a matter of a fact it’s for the second summer in a row. I was beginning to think someone lied to me about the climate in this place, it’s been falsely advertised as the Sunshine Coast. What sunshine? Last year we had 42 days without rain in just over five months, last week we had 300 mm of rain fall in just 30 minutes! I think I want a refund!

However, someone has just reassured me that this amount of water from the wild blue yonder is not normal. Apparently the last two seasons have been extreme in their levels of rainfall. The last time they had such an extreme of weather was in 1974 when Brisbane dramatically flooded, just as it did last year.

Over the ensuing 36 years it grew progressively drier until just a short while ago when there were water restrictions and impending drought.

So if the cycle holds true, it should get better. There’s a little light on the horizon, to be sure it’s peeking through the storm clouds, but with a little hope and positivity it will start shining again - one day.

Soon I hope, because the rain makes the ocean dirty, which in turn means nobody wants to swim in it, which in turn means I sit at home twiddling my thumbs.

What I need to see sooner rather than later is a long stretch of sunny windless days with clean water and small swell. What a wonderful idea, because then I could get out on the ocean on my boat and stop driving my wife insane. Making my new tourism business work and earn its keep. Hence the drive to start another facet of my business and teach people the art of safely manoeuvring a vessel on the water.

In the meantime, to keep busy and to make some money I’ve been working with Ollie Fink from Knight Dive Marine Services. Ollie has been getting a lot of interesting commercial dive jobs lately and I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the team accomplishing those tasks.

Ollie is an ex Navy Clearance diver, one of those boys in the water for the military, the diving elite. His training means he is an exceptional diver with a large amount of skill in performing difficult work underwater. Lately he’s been applying that knowledge to the various industries on the Sunshine Coast.

We’ve done two big salvage jobs in fresh water. One of them was a house boat sunk in the Brisbane floods and the other was a bulldozer which succumbed to a collapsed dirt road in a concrete plant. Neither job was simple or straightforward, but we managed to get the objects out of the water eventually. We had to use tow trucks and cranes and in one case had to clear some trees from the river bank, but we got the jobs done.

We’ve been doing a lot of work for the Jetty Specialist, which involves diving around a drilling platform in the canal systems between Noosa and the Gold Coast.

Ollie and I also did some work with Cole Szujda from Sweetlips Commercial Dive on Noosa main beach. We spent about a week diving in a hole in the beach made by a running pump. The hole was filled with seawater and swirling sand, and the pump was active. Any diver with a clue will tell you that the worst possible place to be underwater is anywhere near the suction of a working pump, we had to be very careful.

We worked in the Brisbane River after the floods clearing pontoons of debris so boats can move freely again.

We worked from a big ship called the Pacific Conqueror where we changed out a marker buoy four and a half nautical miles offshore. We had to dive to a depth of 30 meters and attach lines and chains so they could lift and lower the massive mooring block and the tackle onto and off from the deck of the ship. It took three days to finish that job.

Our latest trick has been going out to the wreck of the Ex-HMAS Brisbane, a purpose-built recreational dive wreck sitting in 27 meters 3 nautical miles offshore from Mooloolaba. We still do regular maintenance and inspection dives on it, keeping it safe for the public to enjoy.

This is a lot of awesome work and I have to confess that even though the dives are mostly in the dark or in the mud and always alone, I’m loving every second of it!

Life is certainly varied and interesting here is Australia, today I’m sitting in a classroom, tomorrow I’m diving in the mud-brown, post-rain muck of the Brisbane River attaching brackets to pylons six meters down. This weekend I have a couple of snorkel trips booked in and next week I’m heading out to the Barwon Banks on a dive expedition to dive an area I’ve never seen before.

It all sounds quite exciting when I write it down like this; I suppose I really shouldn’t be complaining about a little thing like the rain.
 So until next time, thanks for stopping by...