Divor
Contributor
As of this weekend, I consider myself together with the people on our boat to be on of the luckiest divers in Western Australia. After all, we dived the Key Biscane, a sunken oil rig off the coast at Lancelin, notorious for its sloppy conditions (that's how the rig sank in the first place), on what was easily one of the best diving days so far this year: no waves, hardly any current, the ocean was like a bath tub.
Getting up at 3.50 AM is always tough, but anticipating as I am, I had knocked myself out with some red wine (and an excellent one at that) the evening before, so I did manage to catch 6,5 hours of sleep. Packed the gear and off I went in the night to our meeting point at the Two Rocks Marina. After signing off some nonsensical PADI boat releases, the boat left the harbour after some delays and when we got to the water... we were all amazed by the conditions and couldn't believe our luck. That's including the skippers, who contrasted all this with some juicy stories of diving the Key Biscane in a bit more 'strenuous' conditions.
The colourful bunch on the boat were all advanced divers, some diving deco (profiles were submitted 3 days beforehand), most on 27 Nitrox. We were all spread around the boat and enjoying what was a very easy boat ride of 2 hours. I even managed to squeeze in a nap on the front deck.
Then I got woken up and we had arrived. It was quite the experience to have the dreams of diving still lingering in my mind whilst I was gearing up to get into the water. Meanwhile Nat, one of the accompanying instructors, plunged into the ocean to secure a descent line to one of the legs of the wreck. When he came up we were all set to go.
The water just beneath the calm surface was the deepest, magical blue I had ever seen and the visibility was stunning. After our group gathered we started our descent along the line. For the first 20 meters or so, the ocean water stayed very clear, but closer to the ocean floor the visibility dropped to about 15 meters.
Man, is that rig impressive! It is HUGE! I had seen some pictures and videos of the oil rig over at the dirdudes blog (DIRdudes: Key Biscayne) but these guys are either giants or they put their camera on 'overly modest' mode or something. My instructor Marc (I was doing a Deep course) had also seen the dirdudes report and confirmed that it was way bigger than he expected.
We levelled off at 38 meters, did some course routines and then multilevelled up along two legs of the rig, looking at the pristine coral life and some huge fishes along the way. I was concentrating on keeping a good eye on the gauges of my cylinder and my deco bottle (that was only there for practice, contained normal air to be breathed for 1 minute by me and my buddy at the 5m safety stop) as well as my depth and deco time on my computer. I did have to make what seemed like an extra effort to stay concentrated and level-headed (kind of continually and consciously reminding yourself to check your data), but other than that I did not experience some of the yippie-kay-yay narcosis I had previously read about. Possibly due to our slow descent rate. Then back up along the ascent line (same line, different name) at my preferred 9 meters per minute rate (as monitored by a signal emitted from my Citizen Eco-Drive watch that I carried as a back-up depth gauge and timer) and a 5 minute safety stop, all well within the recreational limits.
Awesome barbecue on the boat during our 2 hour surface interval and then geared up for the second dive. I discussed with the instructor to hit the bottom this time, but he wanted to level off at 35 or 36 meters and then hover around the main deck of the rig at about 30 meters, basically maximising our bottom time whilst staying out of deco. My diving buddy discussed rocketing down along the descent line in order to get narced out of our heads, but this was again politely declined by our instructor
. We did agree to not use the descent line all the way but directly swim towards the main platform.
We jumped into the ridiculously clear, blue, calm water and off we went for our second dive. We made a fairly slow descent and levelled of at 36 meters, just by the edge of the platform. When the instructor swam a bit lower to look under a ledge, I thought: "This is my shot!" and I followed him, but kept going as he levelled, and going and going - Yeeeehaaaa!!! - all the way to the bottom at 41 meters. Click - new record. As I came up again he was saying frantically "Big No No!" with his light, and I signalled "Hey, it already happened - chill." We went a bit further around this imposing structure with the allure of an underwater cathedral, which was full of life at this moment and there we suddenly saw it: a HUGE Wobbegong shark, sleeping. We hovered over it a bit and I measured that it was easily my size, so about two meters. It was an extraordinary sight. Even as it was sleeping this thing was radiating power and prowess and its war-like camouflage made it very clear who was the king of this rig. I think we didn't approach it closer than say 3 or 4 meters above it. We did wake it, because it suddenly looked up, twisted in an exhibition of extreme flexibility, seemed to give us a good look and then dived of into the darkness. This is the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my entire life; more fascinating than a helicopter ride through the Grand Canyon; than a spaced out drunk chewing and entire beer glass and then spitting out the blooded shards on our table; than standing between the thousands of Terracotta soldiers who served as a display of absolute power and dedication from an age long forgotten; more fascinating than the view of a shallow river in France from a bridge 130 meters above when you're about to jump off with nothing more than a bungee on your feet. It was humbling. I have seen nothing yet.
As we were doing our safety stop in the beloved blue, blue ocean, I had already made up my mind that that second dive was the best dive ever. A peak. And I will keep diving and looking for something better, bigger, more awesome. I feel truly grateful that I could experience such an awesome dive this early in my diving career.
Back on the boat, beers were being served, the experience was sinking in, I had a good laugh with the instructor who couldn't believe "what a kid" I had been for diving off like that to 41 meters (still chuckling about that one
), and I was really thinking about recreational limits and ways to stay longer (and safer) at that depth, deco, different gasses and such, because there is just so much down there, and yet so little: we mere humans can only expect to personally explore only the tiniest part of the underwater world. And that's why we should get everything within reach, which is a lot, too much and then some.
Getting up at 3.50 AM is always tough, but anticipating as I am, I had knocked myself out with some red wine (and an excellent one at that) the evening before, so I did manage to catch 6,5 hours of sleep. Packed the gear and off I went in the night to our meeting point at the Two Rocks Marina. After signing off some nonsensical PADI boat releases, the boat left the harbour after some delays and when we got to the water... we were all amazed by the conditions and couldn't believe our luck. That's including the skippers, who contrasted all this with some juicy stories of diving the Key Biscane in a bit more 'strenuous' conditions.
The colourful bunch on the boat were all advanced divers, some diving deco (profiles were submitted 3 days beforehand), most on 27 Nitrox. We were all spread around the boat and enjoying what was a very easy boat ride of 2 hours. I even managed to squeeze in a nap on the front deck.
Then I got woken up and we had arrived. It was quite the experience to have the dreams of diving still lingering in my mind whilst I was gearing up to get into the water. Meanwhile Nat, one of the accompanying instructors, plunged into the ocean to secure a descent line to one of the legs of the wreck. When he came up we were all set to go.
The water just beneath the calm surface was the deepest, magical blue I had ever seen and the visibility was stunning. After our group gathered we started our descent along the line. For the first 20 meters or so, the ocean water stayed very clear, but closer to the ocean floor the visibility dropped to about 15 meters.
Man, is that rig impressive! It is HUGE! I had seen some pictures and videos of the oil rig over at the dirdudes blog (DIRdudes: Key Biscayne) but these guys are either giants or they put their camera on 'overly modest' mode or something. My instructor Marc (I was doing a Deep course) had also seen the dirdudes report and confirmed that it was way bigger than he expected.
We levelled off at 38 meters, did some course routines and then multilevelled up along two legs of the rig, looking at the pristine coral life and some huge fishes along the way. I was concentrating on keeping a good eye on the gauges of my cylinder and my deco bottle (that was only there for practice, contained normal air to be breathed for 1 minute by me and my buddy at the 5m safety stop) as well as my depth and deco time on my computer. I did have to make what seemed like an extra effort to stay concentrated and level-headed (kind of continually and consciously reminding yourself to check your data), but other than that I did not experience some of the yippie-kay-yay narcosis I had previously read about. Possibly due to our slow descent rate. Then back up along the ascent line (same line, different name) at my preferred 9 meters per minute rate (as monitored by a signal emitted from my Citizen Eco-Drive watch that I carried as a back-up depth gauge and timer) and a 5 minute safety stop, all well within the recreational limits.
Awesome barbecue on the boat during our 2 hour surface interval and then geared up for the second dive. I discussed with the instructor to hit the bottom this time, but he wanted to level off at 35 or 36 meters and then hover around the main deck of the rig at about 30 meters, basically maximising our bottom time whilst staying out of deco. My diving buddy discussed rocketing down along the descent line in order to get narced out of our heads, but this was again politely declined by our instructor
. We did agree to not use the descent line all the way but directly swim towards the main platform.We jumped into the ridiculously clear, blue, calm water and off we went for our second dive. We made a fairly slow descent and levelled of at 36 meters, just by the edge of the platform. When the instructor swam a bit lower to look under a ledge, I thought: "This is my shot!" and I followed him, but kept going as he levelled, and going and going - Yeeeehaaaa!!! - all the way to the bottom at 41 meters. Click - new record. As I came up again he was saying frantically "Big No No!" with his light, and I signalled "Hey, it already happened - chill." We went a bit further around this imposing structure with the allure of an underwater cathedral, which was full of life at this moment and there we suddenly saw it: a HUGE Wobbegong shark, sleeping. We hovered over it a bit and I measured that it was easily my size, so about two meters. It was an extraordinary sight. Even as it was sleeping this thing was radiating power and prowess and its war-like camouflage made it very clear who was the king of this rig. I think we didn't approach it closer than say 3 or 4 meters above it. We did wake it, because it suddenly looked up, twisted in an exhibition of extreme flexibility, seemed to give us a good look and then dived of into the darkness. This is the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my entire life; more fascinating than a helicopter ride through the Grand Canyon; than a spaced out drunk chewing and entire beer glass and then spitting out the blooded shards on our table; than standing between the thousands of Terracotta soldiers who served as a display of absolute power and dedication from an age long forgotten; more fascinating than the view of a shallow river in France from a bridge 130 meters above when you're about to jump off with nothing more than a bungee on your feet. It was humbling. I have seen nothing yet.
As we were doing our safety stop in the beloved blue, blue ocean, I had already made up my mind that that second dive was the best dive ever. A peak. And I will keep diving and looking for something better, bigger, more awesome. I feel truly grateful that I could experience such an awesome dive this early in my diving career.
Back on the boat, beers were being served, the experience was sinking in, I had a good laugh with the instructor who couldn't believe "what a kid" I had been for diving off like that to 41 meters (still chuckling about that one
), and I was really thinking about recreational limits and ways to stay longer (and safer) at that depth, deco, different gasses and such, because there is just so much down there, and yet so little: we mere humans can only expect to personally explore only the tiniest part of the underwater world. And that's why we should get everything within reach, which is a lot, too much and then some.
