MID-WEEK DIVING WITH DIVE EVOLUTION

Why is the weather always better mid-week? I don’t know how many dives I have missed on a weekend because of lousy weather, even though conditions have been perfect all week! Well recently I had had enough, so booked on a mid-week dive with Dive Evolution to explore the wonderful dive sites off North Stradbroke Island , Brisbane .
    Arriving at Dive Evolution’s shop at Tingalpa the weather couldn’t have been better; no wind and flat seas, a lovely warm autumn day. Loading the dive boat at the back of the shop, Wally Lancaster, the owner of Dive Evolution, informed me that there were only five of us on the boat for a perfect day of diving. Dive Evolution operate an 8m Sterncraft charter boat surveyed for eight divers and two crew.
    With all the gear loaded and everyone ready we headed down to Manly Boat Harbour to launch the boat and were soon streaking across the calm waters of Moreton Bay . In just over an hour we had crossed the bar, hardly a ripple on it today, and anchored at my favourite Brisbane dive site, Manta Bommie. The last few times I have dived Manta Bommie there hadn’t been any mantas about, so I was hoping my luck had changed today.
    Once in the water we found the visibility to be ten to 15m and only a minute into the dive my luck had changed, there was a large manta ray hovering over the bommie. I thought I would take my time to swim over to the manta, not wanting to disturb it. But before I could get within 6m of the giant ray it glided off, and didn’t come back! Damn! For the next fifty minutes we explored the shallow rocky reef at Manta Bommie, seeing leopard sharks, stingrays, turtles, octopus and abundant tropical fish, but no sign of the manta ray!
    After the dive I jumped back in the water for a swim only for Wally to cry out that the manta was back and directly below me. I quickly scrambled back onto the boat, got my gear back on, grabbed my camera and leaped back into the water, only to find no sign of the manta. I snorkelled on the surface, scanning the blue and suddenly saw a large black shape gliding over the bottom, the manta was back. I descended and then spent five wonderful minutes with the manta cruising around me. The graceful ray eventually got bored with me taking its photo and disappeared into the blue.
    For our second dive we headed out to Flat Rock to see if the visibility was better out wider. It was not only better; it was bright blue, that magic blue loo colour! After a surface interval of drinks and buns we jumped in to do a drift dive on the western side of Flat Rock. The visibility was unbelievable, over 30m; it can be very hard to take Brisbane diving. We drifted slowly over gardens of hard coral and encountered wrasses, parrotfish, trumpetfish, angelfish, butterflyfish and a few wobbegongs and turtles. Quite a few batfish were darting about and we also spotted gropers and schools of rabbitfish, surgeonfish, goatfish, snapper and sweetlips.
    Towards the end of the dive we headed through a number of gutters, finding two brown banded catsharks hiding under the coral and several more wobbegongs. We ended the dive with a black blotched stingray and just hanging in the blue void waiting for something spectacular to swim by, as it was that sort of day, but unfortunately nothing did. After a brilliant morning of diving we headed back across the glassy surface of Moreton Bay , pretty confident that the weather would be lousy again by the weekend!

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Article appeared in Dive Log No.274 May 2011