17 September 2005 (Day 12)

Today was a big diving day. As usual we were at the dive shop at 7:30am. Very few people around at the dive shop this morning – Ben was there, another instructor, Jan, and two others – one a student doing the advanced course, and someone we hadn’t met.
It turned out that the other person was Emily, and she is from Melbourne and is also an instructor and has come up to work at the dive shop. Three students and three instructors!
Ben and the student were completing the advanced course with a deep dive to 22 metres, whilst the rest of us waited. After they surfaced we went to Labyrinth again. Jan was a great guide, as she took the time to point things out and name them for us. There were a few worms, different types of anemones (one which looked like the sand!) and Daniel found a couple of eels. A shy lionfish, wobbegongs, turtles, nudibranchs, sailfin catfish and Emily got all excited by a medium sized snapper – we saw bigger at Turquoise Bay!
Our second dive was at Razors, only a short distance away. All six of us descended, but Ben and the student went off on their own. We found more eels, worms, nudibranchs, some tiny pipefish, anemone fish and a crab on the anemone, schools of fish, a juvenile angelfish, a not so shy lionfish and an octopus that Daniel put his gloved hand on!
We had only twenty-five minutes between dives, so a very short surface interval which is needed to allow nitrogen to be released from your blood. PADI divers have a table which enables you to determine how long you can dive without requiring a decompression stop. Because Daniel looks under all the ledges and lays down to get photos of things underneath, he usually goes a little deeper. After the two dives his pressure group was in the Y category and in the safety stop range – a few more minutes and he would have been unable to dive for 24 hours, but as it turned out he was restricted for three hours. Helen was not so dire, she was only restricted for one hour.
In the end it was irrelevant. Our next dive was on the famous Navy Pier. It is rated as one of the top ten shore dives in the world! We had a surface interval of 3:25, so we both were back to the A Pressure Group.
The Navy Pier is an active pier used by the navy to provide fuel to the navy base out here. The base consist primarily of thirteen towers interconnected with cables. The towers are taller than the Eiffel Tower, but because there is nothing around to compare it against, it doesn’t look that tall.
The towers are used to communicate with submarines all over the world and is maintained by the Australian Government, but it is a US facility. Nearby is the Safe Base Harold E. Holt, but that too is pretty much empty now – the buildings are Heritage Trust listed as if it wasn’t for the navy and the telecommunication towers the township of Exmouth would not exist.
We were told stories that:

• the town was offered free power from the US base, but as it would be based on the US power supply all equipment running on it would have to be bought from the US so the offer was declined;
  
• the US would remove all timber from the pier when a cyclone was coming and replace it later – the Australian government thought it wasn’t necessary. After cyclone Vance they had to collect all the timber that was blown all over the bay;
  
• a concrete block used to anchor one of the wires from the towers was flung around the tower and came to earth near one of the roads – it stays there today;
  
• a glass bottom boat from the Bundegei pier was blown into the tower;
  
• instead of shipping their private vehicles back to the US when they pulled out, they burnt their Cadillacs;
  
• a huge groper, called George was the subject of a special operation when the pulled out. Operation Kill George. They failed but George is now a rare site and doesn’t approach divers anymore; and
  
• contractors repairing the pier fished off the pier – against all restrictions.
  

The lowest gangway on the Pier is about two metres from sea level. Geoff (the usual skipper of Concord) was our guide on this tour with six other people (maximum of eight on the dives – including one woman who had no need for a BCD!) We went down to the gangway for the dive brief and looking over the side we could see hundreds of fish just below the surface!
We jumped in, and the masks were pushed up, but we survived. Then it was time to go down. We descended to the bottom, mindful of the scorpion fish, stonefish and lionfish that we were warned to be careful of.
On the way down their were juvenile batfish and snapper. Then we went under the pier. Literally hundreds of fish. Massive fish. Chevron Barracuda, Lionfish, White tip Reef Shark, Bannerfish, two types of eels, Stonefish, HUGE gropers and tuskfish with impressive jaws and a big old turtle – bigger than Henry at Hamilton Island – who starred Daniel in the face before swimming away, wobbegongs, nudibranchs. Pretty much every fish we’ve seen over the whole week was in one spot and massive! What is the navy doing out here?
The aim was to be down for an hour, but Daniel ran out of air – well kind of. Navy requirements are that you surface with no less than 50 BAR in the tank. That is exactly what Daniel had, despite starting with 240 BAR. During the dive Helen’s buoyancy went haywire. She took off and rocketed to the surface despite trying to dump air from her BCD. With all the girders from the pier above it was luck that she didn’t hit any. Daniel started to ascent to make sure everything was okay but Helen made her way back down.
Whilst waiting for the rest of the group to come back up we watched a whale breaching in the distance.
After heading back to the store and washing our gear we headed back to the Stalag for a while before going over to Potshots for dinner. Daniel had a steak, whilst Helen had a calamari and salad. Both were nice, and a lot cheaper than Spinnakers! Half the staff from the dive shop also seemed to be there. We made our way back to the Stalag and again fell asleep with ease!