Diving with Super-gropers

I am sitting on a terrace with a very tasty Cascade premium light beer sitting next to me while I’m writing this. The beer is cold and a lot of condense drips off it… I think I’ll drink it :o) and probably another one after that.

I just came back from a very good day of diving. The boat ride is about 2 hours and of course you see dolphins everywhere: they rode the wake waves of our boat for a small moment. Heaven! Or is it? I looked into the water and saw this huge yellow shark. “Aw that’s a Yellow Tiger shark said the captain. “Not really dangerous.” NOT REALLY? How’s that? Well, he said. I’ve seen a 29 foot White Shark. It was caught a few days later. 29 FOOT!!! Djzeezzuzz..

Alright, so I took the plunge anyway and came up against a very strong current. Dove down to 28 meters as quickly as possible and there she was the SS Yongala who sank a century ago, teaming with fish. There really are no words to explain how many fish there were. It was almost ridiculous. Clouds of fish, you can’t look 10 cm into because they are so dense. Absolutely incredible. The clouds are being split open by hunting trevalies, gropers, barracuda and other hunters. I have never seen so much action, everything was moving. I saw just about every fish in the ocean in that one spot.

Then suddenly: I found what I came to see a super-Groper. This one is called a Queensland groper, and its big, massive, the king of these waters. The one I saw was big enough to be very unkind so I kept my distance: It was about as big as a Volkswagen Beetle and weighs in at 500-600 kg. When I came up they said that the one I saw is called VW (what a coincidence) and isn’t even the biggest. The largest one is called Grumpy and has a hundred kilograms more.

The second dive was a lot easier, no more current as the tide had reached its peak. Again fish o’galore. Clown fish, sea snakes, trunk fish, the biggest trevalies on the planet, a huge stingray, sea turtles, a magnificent wreck and all of the sudden a beeeeeeeeep, buzz, buzz, buzz: my diving computer tells me: “get the fuck out now!”. Damn I’ve been in the water way too long, way too deep. I’m going to need decompression chamber if I don’t get out now, and more I’m flying tomorrow afternoon… This is not good, better hurry. So I reluctantly made my ascent (100 bars left) and got out. My buddy a guy from the Netherlands and I made the 2 longest dives of the day.

The captain and I talked a bit, I enjoyed watching flying-fish scatter off the bow and we even saw a fish ball being attacked from the air by sea gulls and from beneath by travelies and barracudas on the way back. What a day!