JAWS!

Well I had a close encounter today... in fact I had several!

Thats right, I went scuba diving and saw, not only some amazing coral, but about 20 Grey Nurse Sharks too!! And beautiful creatures they are too... Many times they would come swimming up to within about 1 metre of me, not to take a nibble, but rather to investigate this strange black object floating through their back-yard.

I had a refresher dive first today since its been a good year and 3 months since I last took a dive but it all quickly came back to me and, thankfully, my sore ear gave me no problems this time around. For those who dont know/remember, I had a problem with my left ear when I dived in Dubai and had a blocked ear for 3 months followed by a constant high ringing tone in my ear up to the present day. The doctor said I may have had a perforation in my ear-drum, but now thankfully I know that I dont. The instructor here was very good and made sure that I didnt have any probs with my ear as we dived down as deep as 26 metres. Phew! It certainly was a bit scary though as we were descending that deep and couldnt see the bottom or the top and then suddenly sharks appear beneath your feet.

I also tried out my new underwater camera case today and with the digital camera I took some fantastic shots.. about 90 in total, including several minutes of video footage! The problem was, though, that the batteries ran out before I had a chance to use it on the second dive (the dive with the sharks) and so I didnt get any footage of the sharks unfortunately

After we finished the second dive, we were treated to an awesome display of 12 humpback whales flailing gracefully out of the ocean only about 200 metres away from us! Oooh yeah I got a shark tooth too from the dive at Wolf Rock! Fantastic day this one!

Tommorrow Im off north again and will forever have fond memories of Rainbow Beach!