I feel nervous in a queasy sort of way. Was it the rollercoaster of a ride through choppy waters out to the dive site or the fact that I hadn’t gone diving in two years? One hour’s sleep and a night spent helping my friend celebrate her 25th birthday sure didn’t help, but I ruled out seasickness and dived right in to my hesitation on whether I would remember how to scuba.
I sat there looking at my oxygen tank. It was all like learning to ride a bike again – just need to get back on and start pedaling; however, this bike came with training wheels thanks to the friendly, patient and quintessential happy Aussie dive masters who were there to guide me through the process again.
Scuba diving in Sydney. Getting our gear ready.
My first time scuba diving in two years saw me spend a morning out in the sea with ProDive Sydney, who picked me and a few other divers up from Rose Bay Wharf after heading out from their headquarters in Manly. Though the plan was to head out to Magic Point to dive with grey nurse sharks, the calm and gentle morning sky didn’t exactly mean a calm and gentle ocean. The ProDive team reckoned there were two metre swells coming in, so they wanted to take us to dive sites that were a bit safer, more protected and would make for a more enjoyable dive in easier conditions.
Scuba diving in Sydney. The ProDive Sydney boat and crew.
There were three dive masters and a total of about 15 divers, which made the teams intimate and made me feel like my dive master (along with the other dive masters) knew who I was, as if I had been a regular.
It’s that same feeling of comfort you get from going to a cafe where the barista knows not only your name but your order. When you’re going diving with someone, you want to feel like you’re more than just a number in the crowd. The equipment on the boat was up to par, and I liked was the availability of ‘wetty’ sweatshirts with hoods for divers like myself who were used to diving in warmer waters – that way we can enjoy 40 minutes of diving without shivering to our cores.
Scuba diving in Sydney.
We arrived at our first site, Flagstaff, and had a good debriefing of all things diving: a reminder of which hand signals mean what, what to do if we lose our buddy or our group, what to expect to see down below and the layout of the ocean floor. I’ll admit that having dived in crystal clear waters where the visibility was more than 30 metres, it was somewhat disappointing that the visibility of the dives were less than 10 metres; however, a technicality like that that is out of ProDive’s control and both of the day’s dives were made in the harbour due to calmer conditions.
We saw a variety of fish of all sizes, from giant cuttlefish and to sting rays to small schools of fish. One thing was for certain – it felt good to go diving again. When we came up from the dive, a bit cold from nearly 40 minutes of exploring underwater, we were greeted with warm cups of tea, pumpkin soup, bite-size sausage rolls, meat pies, spring rolls and money pockets as well as some lollies to crank up our energy. (As an American I inherently love lollies, so this alone made me want to come back diving with them every weekend.)
The second dive saw us navigating our way around a site called Quarantine, named aptly for all those sent to the quarantine house sitting just on the shore above the site. Despite the cloudy waters, we saw sting rays, giant fish, small schools of fish, a sea turtle, an octopus and one group even saw a small shark. We came up happy divers (I also came up totally separated from my original group, only realising I lost them when the diver next to me made the symbol for umm…where’s your buddy?), and I couldn’t help but think about how every day as we’re doing our thing above waters in Sydney, there is a whole other world functioning in the depths of the harbour.
It was a beautiful morning to be out diving in Sydney, and though it was unfortunate that the seas were too rough to make our way over to Magic Point, it still ended up being a morning well spent exploring. The dive masters were fun-loving and welcoming, the divers were enthusiastic and friendly, and the experience as a whole is one that should be on everyone’s Sydney bucket list.
Learn to dive with ProDive from just $199, see the website for more.
Note: This article first appeared on Escape Lounge . I received complimentary dives with ProDive as part of an article for Escape Lounge but was not compensated for the article. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
