Cold Comfort

I undertook a dive course a few months ago, and recently thought I had best put some of those new skills into practice before the cold really sets in. I allowed myself to be talked in to the deeper wreck dives down near Eden rather than the more sedate dives up at Jervis Bay. Thus last weekend, with a gale blowing and 15 C water temperature I discovered the joys of changing in and out of a (increasingly damp) wetsuit in the carpark, zooming across a very choppy seascape while being assured it would be better around the corner (it was actually), and following a weedy rope down down down through cold water, until (29m below) the surface is reduced to a vague glow which you don't really want to think about.

Well at least it wasn't three metre visibility as it was during my course, but this cold southern diving wasn't quite what I had in mind - more the tropics - bath warm crystal clear water with plenty to see within 10m of the surface. I've done plenty of snorkeling in such environs, and had often thought how good it would be to be able to dive under for longer than a single breath allows.

The shadowy wrecks were impressive though - dark shapes dissolving into the distance - encrusted with all sorts of slow shelled things and sessile soft sponges and weed. Others more equipped (and boy, does it cost to equip!)shone torches to bring out the colours that the waterlogged sunlight failed to uncover. And the fish, about their business in singles, pairs and sociable escher-like schools, inspecting the hull and sheltering within the cabins. Gropers greeting the divers in expectation that someone might provide a morsel or two.

Much better then, than later on the night dive, when drifting through cold wet blackness, torches probing, I found many either drowsy or alarmed at being aroused and thought, isn't it enough that we catch them with hook and net, without shining torches into their eyes while they rest? Facing down into the black, it was like being part of some bomber squadron, the torch light like searchlights but probing down rather than up, searching across the rocky weedy bottom, coming to rest upon a spiny (resting) rock cod, a hermit crab peeking from beneath its shell, or the depressing sight of a recently dead eel, bound up in fishing line.

And finally the last dive Sunday morning, the sun deciding to show and the wind not to blow, a shallower trip to a cave across bare rocky bottom dotted with urchins and clumps of weed. The cave entrance encrusted with sponge and weed and all manner of life I could not name, while our expirations pooled like mercury on the ceiling. Coming to the surface again, despite the chill of the water it was rather enjoyable resting on the surface in the sunshine, sea otter-like while I waited for my turn to climb back aboard the boat and renew my acquaintance with gravity.

And you know, while I did think much of one usually close, but then far away; I did not realize until afterwards that all weekend I had not thought of the world and its troubles, nor my own small ones. Nice to immerse oneself so fully that such things can dissolve away, for a while at least.