Forster Weekend

Some found leaving Sydney a hard task and the last of us arrived at our accommodation the Blue Water Divers Lodge at around 11.30pm that night. Upon their arrival I greeted them with the good news that we had to be down at the wharf at 7.30am.

Our first dive for the day was at The Pinnacles, 5 kms from Forster (this is where they guarantee the sighting of grey nurse sharks). There were a few amongst us that had not experienced the thrill of seeing a grey nurse shark, and before the dive they were both excited and anxious.

We were not to be disappointed. Upon descending the anchor line we settled onto a rock ledge at 32 metres and peered over the edge to see a large 4 metre pregnant Grey Nurse Shark with a number of other smaller sharks, slowly moving around with some coming quite close at times. There were also lots of large wobbegongs lazing on the bottom.

Our second dive of the day was at Latitude Rock. The visibility was pretty bad, however the highlight of this dive was the sighting of the large sea turtle that we came face to face with. After he checked us out on the bottom, he then went up and said hello to the other group of divers on the boat.

After a hard days diving we all headed back to the Dive lodge where Sam our Brazilin friend headed off to do some sightseeing and the rest of us had an afternoon snooze.

That night we all headed off to the RSL for dinner, not knowing where we were going to dive the next day. We were all hoping to go to Seal Rocks, however this was subject to the conditions on the day.

I was also surprised to hear that Manu had not seen a Grey Nurse Shark at The Pinnacles that day. I don't know how he missed them, however, he did manage to see some on the Sunday.

On Sunday once again we were all up early and down at the wharf at 7.30am to be told that the conditions were right for Seal Rocks. We were to set up our tanks and BC's, put them on the boat and to meet Ron and the guys at Seal Rocks at 9.00am.

It was a mad rush back to the Dive Lodge to pack up, strip the beds, put out the garbage and head off to Seal Rocks some 1/2 hours drive away. At Seal Rocks there are few amenities and you need to swim out to the boat from the beach.

Our first dive for the day was at Little Seal Rock, again we were able to see Grey Nurse Sharks and Wobbegongs and even a few Port Jackson Sharks. There were also some excellent swim throughs and the visibility was a great improvement from the previous day. The second dive of the day saw us down to seven divers and we headed off to Skeleton Rocks where the visibility was again not great.