As divers, we certainly can’t complain about the stunning weather conditions experienced as of late, apart from a short but intense burst of swell from the Southern Ocean, diving conditions at our local sites have been very nice.
Over the Easter to Anzac day public holidays, we took the opportunity to shut up shop and make the most of what is one of the quietest part of the calendar with so many people away and to escape the Perth for a few days where the weather over there was on-par with the weather that we experience in our Victorian Summer with superb sea conditions, not to mention that this coincided with a highly anticipated event being the Australian Youth Championship for Water Polo which brings clubs from around the country to play in Western Australia (Yes, we have a vested interest with our son playing in the Richmond Under 16 team), the team was t-shirt sponsored by our amazing partners SCUBAPRO and the boys did Victoria proud by coming 6th in the overall scheme of things, the highest place ever obtained by a Richmond team at a national competition!
The weather on Australia’s East coast however wasn’t playing ball in that part of the world with monumental swells hitting NSW with the unfortunate loss of 5 lives as a result of drownings and affecting dive sites and impacting on visibility as reported by some of our club members who ventured up there to dive…
These events remind us that although the sea is our beloved playground that provides us countless hours of enjoyment and fun, it can also be a nasty and dangerous place that needs to be understood and respected at all times.
Also making headline news and widely reported through social media has been the death toll inflicted on marine life along the South Australian coastline as a result of an algael bloom. A scientific report just released explained how and why this algae is killing countless millions of fish and other marine creatures. Apparently, the algae has a 2 fold affect, one is that algae as a living marine organism, is literally sucks up oxygen from the water reducing the amount of oxygen available and required by marine animals to live and survive, the other affect takes place on the fish themselves with the algae coating the gills of the fish and impeding the oxygen transfer and literally choking the poor creature to a slow and horrible death.
Scientists are saying that all it will take is a good storm with reasonably strong winds to “turn the tide” and stir up the ocean enough to stop the proliferation of the algae and restoring the oxygen balance of the ocean in that part of the world. The sad thing is that creatures that take a long time to mature with slow reproductive cycles such as the iconic Leafy Sea dragon will be impacted, hopefully enough survive to restore the population to previous levels.