Trying out the new Go Pro dive housing in Opal Reef

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There was one day during this week in which we had 4 Spanish speaking people on the boat; a couple from Argentina (Esteban and Inés) who were on their honeymoon and a couple from Chile (José Morán and Rosario Méndez) who are living in Sydney. Turned out that the José and Rosario are part of a group of Chileans that are all living in Sydney, between Bondi and Cogee. My connection with them is José María Pinto who was a classmate of mine in the Chilean Naval School. I've met several people of that group now, because they've all been to the Great Barrier Reef on the boat I Work on (Calypso). The first two people who went on the boat recommended it to the next who came here and so on. By coincidence, the days they've been on the boat I've been working there and most of them have tried the "discover scuba diving" program with me.

As most of the divers that day spoke Spanish, I was asked to do the class that day. In all, it went pretty well, they had a good time and on the way back, I had time to talk with all of them.



On one of the other days, I had two girls (certified divers) who were diving with me: Eva, a doctor from NY and Lisa, a health consultant from New Mexico. Both of them hadn't dived in a while, so the dives we did were sort of a refresher for them. Anyway, they both did really well and we had some really good dives. Also, the visibilty was outstanding for a few days in a row. On the way back to Port Douglas I spent most of the time talking with them.



I recently bought on e-Bay a new dive housing for my "Go pro Hero HD 2" camera and I received it a few days ago, so I wanted to go diving on my next day off to try it out and see how the videos came out.



A friend of mine from Sydney, Daniel Anderson, was staying in a place near Port Douglas for a few days. He recently quit his job and is taking a year off to travel. The first few months he's been traveling with his parents on their sailboat. They left Sydney about a month ago and started to make their way up north, stopping in different places. Their next destination is Papua New Guinea.

Dan and I did the Scuba Diving Instructor develpment course (IDC) in Sydney together and that's where I know him from. Because we both have the same name and both our surnames start with "A", the course director nicknamed us Mk-1 and Mk-2. As I'm the oldest, I'm Mk-1 and he's Mk-2. We also both came up with slogans for ourselves. Mk-2 is "The new and improved version" and Mk-1 is "They don't make them like they used to". This made for a lot of jokes during the course and we still call each other Mk-1 and Mk-2.

Anyway, I knew Dan was near Port Douglas and invited him to go diving on Calypso, so I asked to have Friday off.

We got to the marina early in the morning, left our stuff on the boat and went to have a coffee. We left on the boat left at around 9 and we had about 1 1/2 hour to get to the reef. We had a really good sunny day and the visibility on all 3 sites was excellent so it was the perfect day to try out the new dive housing for the camera.

The first site we did was SNO (South - North Opal). We went to about 20 meters at first, doing a big semicircle around the site while slowly ascending and then comming back in a straight line towards the boat at depths between 3 and 5 meters where there's a lot of flat plate corals and lots of fish. Because it's so shallow, colors are not faded out and I got really good footage with the camera:

The second dive was at "Blue Buoy", a site I was getting a bit tired of, until I started exploring another side of it and now I find it to be pretty good. We had a very chilled dive and got to explore a few small entrances (sort of like small open caves) on the way back to the boat.

Videos of Blue Buoy:

The last dive of the day was also the best. I asked the skipper to get a drop off. Suprisingly he agreed (it was a very busy day on the boat), so they got us on the dinghy and took us out. We back-rolled over the side of the dinghy and started to make our way back to Calypso. The site is called "The Wedge" and it's one of my favorites. The visibility was about 30 meters in 360º where we were dropped off. A few minutes into the dive, I saw a small white tip reef shark at about 22 meters and we went to have a closer look. As is usual with these sharks, it swam away as soon as it sensed we were approaching it. A few minutes later I looked down and to my surprise I saw the biggest school of barracudas I've seen; there were hundreds of them. Then I saw 3 grey reef sharks swimming between them. It was an awesome sight and like nothing I've seen in Opal Reef so far. We stayed there for about 5 minutes and I took photos and videos:

We then continued the dive and saw another white tip reef shark, of which I also took a video:

The rest of the dive we stayed in pretty shallow waters, swimming between corals and lots of fish. It was an excellent way to end the day.



That evening, back in Port Douglas, we went home and then took a taxi with Bruce and Giselle to go to Alex and Kane's house. They moved there recently and were having a house warming. A few more people from the boat showed up and we stayed there up until midnight more or less. It was really chilled and good fun.



A few more things I did during the week: I finally got a haircut after more than 2 months and I got in touch with César, a Chilean who works in the Court House Hotel. We're trying to organize something for the celebration of Chile's Independence day on the 18th of September. Apparently he has invited about 20 people and so have I (of all people going about 4 are Chilean). I still have no idea how we're going to organize it and how many people are going to show up, but I'm definitely looking forwards to it and I'm going to ask for the next day off, we'll see how it goes.

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Comments

[andres]

saludos
Daniel, los videos están buenisimos. Por aca todo bien. Este fin de seman lo pasamos con nuestros amigos familia Bertolotto que se quedaron acá por el fin de semana asi es que inauguramos la temporada de asados y el quincho. Vamos a Rapel para el 18 con la mamo y papo. Todos te manada saludos. Gracias por el poi para Pablo. Estamos ya haciendo buenos malabares. un abrazo, Andres