SCUBA Diving Julian Rocks, Byron Bay, Australia, Part II

Let's Get Wet, originally uploaded by peteg.

Our Launch, originally uploaded by peteg.

Heading out to sea, originally uploaded by peteg.

Leopard Shark, originally uploaded by peteg.

Byron Bay is a cool little beach town with lots of open air coffee shops and restaurants and backpacking Euros marching around. Reggae drifted out from the coffee shops and everybody was young, healthy and beautiful in a natural surfer kind of way. We were in Byron Bay to go SCUBA diving at Julian Rocks Marine Preserve.

Named by Captain Cook before he got killed by angry Hawaiians, Julian Rocks are just a couple of rocks about 1/2 a mile out in the Bay. Because they are situated right where the warm waters from the north meet the cooler waters from the south, it has a unique abundance and variety of marine life. Some people say they diving there is better than on the Great Barrier Reef.

After getting geared up we took a quick 5-7 min ride out to the Rocks on an inflatable sided boat. The weather was perfect, the sun out, crystal clear skies and water. It felt so good to be alive... riding on the boat with the wind in our hair and the sea spray blowing in our faces. We did the total Jacques Cousteau backwards roll into the water. It was exhilarating.

We did two dives and they were well organized and personalized to our skill level. We dove with an instructor on both. The first dive was kinda rough because we had never dealt with currents before and our group had 5 people in it, not including the Dive Master. Once we got down (60 feet), Germans were bumping into Italians, and it's not like the two Americans were staying out of the way either. We say a Leopard shark, lots of fish and other marine life. It was a good start.

When we went out a second time it was much better. It was just the two of us and our dive master was better than the first. We took our time and had a really mellow dive. We saw a school of about 25 Eagle Rays swim by, and then as we rounded the corner we saw some sort of Giant Ray swimming up a rock wall. It was awesome. He was so giant and graceful. We saw puffer fish, schools of tuna, dozens of wobbegongs, little plankton-y type critters, crabs, big ol' potato cods....we saw so many different kinds of fish, we couldn't possibly remember all of them to identify later. It was incredible.