marinegirl

Crikey, it seems like a long time ago now, but here’s the rest of my holiday reports!After being blown out on the first couple of days, we finally managed to get underwater. Everyone else had their drysuits, and I was super-shivery in my 5mm wetsuit in the 17C water, but it was totally worth it!

Jim (Thistleton, of KI Diving Safaris) explained that the North coast of Kangaroo Island is the confluence of two major current systems, which leads to a bizarre combination of tropical and temperate species. The diversity of seagrass is just amazing, and everywhere is teeming with fish life. Jim guarentees that he’ll find you a leafy seadragon within two days, or he’ll give you another two days diving for free. That sounds pretty cocky, until you meet the guy, and you realise that he just knows the underwater environment here so well. True to his word, we found our leafy on the second dive.

By the end of the first day we were all experts at spotting the weedy seadragons, which stand out as being much bluer than the surrounding seagrass, but we had no chance at all with the leafys! Jim had to practically pick the thing up before I realised what he was trying to point out to me, and if you blinked for just a second they would disappear before your eyes! They really are masters of camouflage. But the undewater attractions don’t end with the seadragons. We had huge groupers and wrasse (bigger than me!) which followed us around, and pufferfish, and lobsters, and best of all - seals! It’s amazing how just looking at a seal can make you feel warmer! Just as we were ending our first dive we caught a glimpse of two playing below us… a teaser for what was to come.

On our final dive, we went for a ’seal dive’ - over to the rocky gullies where Jim knows they like to hang out. We quickly found three seals, who were happy to play with us and hung around for the whole dive! Before we went in, Jim taught us how to speak basic seal - we had to look fun to play with, or they would get bored quickly and move on. So there we were, akwardly somersaulting and spinning around desperately tring to entertain some very bemused looking seals! I’ve never felt so clumsy underwtaer before, they just move so quickly and elegantly through the water, it’s breathtaking. With all that underwtaer excersise I wasn’t cold for a second, and I had to keep checking my air, which was disappearing quick! It’s difficult to imagine how you could have more fun than that on a dive!

Check out some more of Rich’s underwater photos from Kangaroo Island here.