Scuba Diving - Diamond Beach

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Scuba Diving - Diamond Beach

After several months of not diving, I was finally able to get back into the water today. The past 4 weekends have been rainy, windy, and cold so diving was out of the question. Today the weather was pretty good, the seas were calm and I had all my gear prepped and ready.

Now that I'm a living further north, I'm also closer to many of my favorite spots. Commute time has gone from 60 minutes to 20 minutes to these sites. This has been great for a scuba addict like me.

The first spot that Edwin and I went to was Onna Toilet Bowl. We checked out the water and thought it was good looking. After walking back to the car, suiting up, and coming back to the entry point the water was a bit rougher so we decided not to enter. We threw our gear into the trunk and drove north to Diamond Beach. There were hardly any waves but the tide was coming in which made kicking out a bit tiresome. The water was about 69-71 degrees depending on depth. After about 38 minutes of being in the water, we surfaced and kicked our way back to shore (took about 10 minutes). Taking off the wetsuit was chilly! Luckily I had a towel to dry off with and sweatpants and a sweatshirt to put on so I was able to warm up quickly.

Diamond Beach can be really amazing or really bad depending on the visibility. I would guess that today there was a visibility of about 40 feet (which is so-so) The best I've ever seen was around 60-70 feet. Despite the poor vis, there were quite a bit of fish swimming around. The one bad part about this location is the prevalence of sea snakes. I must have seen about 8 or 10 today, and they were all about 3 or 4 feet long! I think it must have been feeding time because they were all poking their heads into the coral (I'm assuming to find something to munch on!). Most of the time sea snakes just curl up under a piece of coral and hang out. The sea snakes I saw yesterday were exceptionally active.

Some of the neat things I saw today included several lionfish and a spotted pufferfish. The photo I've included here shows a spotted lionfish that must have been a baby because it was only about the length of my hand. The picture of the pufferfish shows it laying on the bottom of the ocean floor. I've seen some types of fish laying on the sand but never a pufferfish. This puffer was also rather lethargic as it allowed Edwin and I to get within a couple feet before it swam away.

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/kdupak/27March2009DiamondBeach?feat=directlink

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Photos

Small Spotted Lionfish
This fish was the length of my palm