We have a number of PADI and SDI courses scheduled over the next couple of months that may whet your appetite.
- PADI Rescue Diver Course – 11-13 May 2012 – $399
- Deep Course – 19-20 May 2012 – $399
- SDI Nitrox Course – 24 May 2012 – $199
- SDI Advanced Open Water Course + Nitrox Course – 24-27 May 2012 – $498
- PADI Nitrox Course – 31 May 2012 – $199
- PADI Advanced Course + Nitrox Course – 31 May – 3 June 2012 – $498
- PADI Advanced Course – 31 May – 3 June 2012 – $399
Click on the links above for more information or call or visit the shop. Bookings are essential.
Heron Island is celebrating its status as one of Australia’s top dive destinations with the
Heron Island Dive Festival.
Heron Island is known the world over for its excellent Great Barrier Reef dive sites and fantastic coral gardens and pinnacles, all just minutes from the beach. Join us for an experience of a lifetime.
25-29 July 2012
5 days / 4 nights ex Gladstone from $1,256 per person
Tour Inclusions:
- Return boat transfers ex. Gladstone
- 4 nights twin Turtle Room accommodation on Heron Island
- Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily
- 2 boat dives per day including the use of tanks,
- Weights & dive guide services
- Dive Festival activities and presentations
BOOK EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT !
Booking conditions apply. Subject to availability.
Accommodation Upgrades
- Reef Room (twin) : + $ 80 pp
- Beachside Suite (twin) : + $160 pp
- Point / Wistaria Suite (twin) : + $240 pp
- Beach House (twin) + $320 pp
Additional nights from $314 pp twin share
Dive Festival Highlights
- Diving & Snorkelling
- Wine tasting & cooking master classes daily
- A series of inspirational presentations
- Gala buffet seafood dinner on 29 July
Spots are limited and filling fast, so please contact our team in store, by email (info@stgeorgeunderwater.c
Friday 27 April – Sunday 29 April
COST: $425.00 + $18.00 fuel levy (paid on board)
The famous Oceantrek dive boat is taking the St George Underwater Centre dive crew out for a weekend of diving in Jervis Bay, and we want you to join us!
Step aboard the Oceantrek, one of Australia’s most famous liveaboards and prepare for diving, food and fun with your …dive buddies!
We board the Oceantrek boat at Husskinson Warf at 9pm and head out for two days of diving! Experience the waters of Jervis Bay and explore new parts of underwater NSW!
You will need to provide your own:
- Dive Computer (You must use a dive computer as we’ll doing multiple dives)
- Scuba Equipment (wetsuit, boots, mask, snorkel, fins, regulator, BCD)
- Tank & Weights (Your tank needs to be filled)
- Safety Sausage with 5 metre line
- Certification Cards and Log Books
- Clothing, swimmers and towel
- Any alcohol you wish to consume (The boat is BYO)
Your trip includes:
- Air Fills
- All meals
- Set Dives
- Hot showers on the dive deck!
- And of course, lots of fun!
Nitrox will be available at extra cost.
Spots are limited and filling fast, so please contact our team in store, by email (info@stgeorgeunderwater.c
Deposit is required to secure your space. Full payment due 13th April at the LATEST.
And diving, too. When I last bought a pair of wetsuit boots I just went for something cheap that fitted and would keep me warm. Boots with thick soles were available but I didn’t think I would need them. I admit that was a bad decision. A number of times over the life of the boots I ended up with sea urchin spines in my feet and also had discomfort while walking over sharp rocks too and from shore dive entry points. While diving in Borneo in October, the zip on one of my boots broke and it was time for a new pair.
I went to Caitlin, told her I needed a new pair of boots and said I wanted a pair with decent soles on them. She recommended a pair of Mares TriBoot 5 boots. After trying on a few pairs to get the size right, I settled on size 9. They felt a little loose but the next size down was too tight. I’d rather have them feel a bit loose than cramp my feet.
The first dive I did in the boots was at Bare Island. We walked around the eastern side of the island to enter on the far southern side. The rocks are quite rough and sharp but the boots protected my feet well. In fact, they were very comfortable and didn’t seem loose anymore. In the water, the boots also did their job keeping my feet warm and were still comfortable inside my fins.
The boots include a raised knob just above the heel which secures the fin strap. I was a little concerned it might be tight on my Achilles tendon but the knob works well and caused me no problems. It works very well with the bungie strap on my new Scubapro Seawing Nova fins.
I have done 15 dives since then, including a number at The Leap, The Steps and The Monument, all of which can be hard on the feet. I’m very pleased with the boots.
While boots are only a small part of the diving kit, I see no reason not to find a comfortable pair that also protect the feet while walking to and from a dive site. The Mares TriBoot 5 do just that.
Here’s a video Damien put together from some footage and stills taken from the Hideaway Island trip over New Year’s.
St George Underwater – Hideaway Island 2012 from Damien Siviero on Vimeo.
Enjoy!
Shiprock, one of the best (if not the best) dive sites in Sydney, has been closed since the end of August for a major upgrade and facelift. According to Sutherland Shire Council,the work is due to be completed at the end of February, 2012. For more information about the upgrade see the link above.
While waiting for the work to be completed, I thought there might be some value in reminding people who have dived Shiprock what the path looked like before the upgrade and to show those new to Shiprock what we had to put up with. I must say that while the trips down the path and especially the trips up the path were difficult, the dive more than made up for it. Even on a bad day, Shiprock is a great dive.
The old path was steep, slippery and at times dangerous, especially after rain. As Kel recently commented, if you were one of the last to leave the water and had to make your way up the path after 20-40 divers had just trudged up, it could be quite a challenge.
Here’s what the path looked like while heading down. For those that have never dived Shiprock, remember that you’d be wearing full dive gear including weights…
And here’s what the path looked like when you were heading back to the car after a dive. Again, you had full dive gear and you were usually dripping wet making the path quite slippery, even if it hadn’t rained…
Looking at the work they have done so far and the plans they have for the upgrade, diving Shiprock is going to be much easier… I hope this doesn’t mean it will become even more crowded when the tides are right.
We have a number of PADI and SDI courses scheduled over the next couple of months that may whet your appetite.
- SDI Advanced Open Water Course + Nitrox Course – 19 – 22 January 2012 – $498
- SDI Nitrox Course – 19 January 2012 – $199
- PADI Peak Performance Buoyancy Course – 29 January 2012 – $199
- PADI Advanced Course + Nitrox Course – 2 – 5 February 2012 – $498
- PADI Nitrox Course – 2 February 2012 – $199
- PADI Rescue Diver Course – 17 – 19 February 2012 – $399
Click on the links above for more information or call or visit the shop. Books are essential.
You wouldn’t guess it from the air temperature but it truly is Summer here in Sydney and the diving has been outstanding. If you don’t like diving in cold water, you’ll be pleased to know that the water temperature has finally increased with 20 to 22ºC in shallow water and usually above 18ºC in deeper water. I should admit that my first dive of the year it was just above 17ºC at 18 metres off Bare Island, but I think that was an exception.
Pot-bellied seahorse, Hippocampus abdominalis, at The Leap on 14 January.
Not only is the water warmer, but there is a lot of life around. On dives so far this Summer, we have see Port Jackson sharks, blue groper, many nudibranchs, octopus (including a blue-lined octopus that George saw at Salmon Haul Bay, Cronulla), weedy seadragons and seahorses.
Nudibranch, Tambja verconis, at Bare Island on 2 January.
Visibility for most of the dives has been good, although as usual it depends on the dives, weather and the tides. Last Saturday was a pretty ordinary day, overcast and windy, and yet we had over 15 metres at The Leap (Kurnell). Even the viz at Bare Island has been OK.
Weedy seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus, at Bare Island on 2 January.
If you have been hesitant to get out for a dive I recommend you come and join us on one of the club dives. There’s a dive on every Saturday and Sunday, as well as a night dive every second Friday. If you can get Thursday mornings off, we even have a mid-week dive most weeks. The dive schedule is usually posted on our Facebook page, with meeting times and the dive’s location.
Come and get wet and join in the fun.
You know we always try to find somewhere different to dive, well, we have booked one of the most secluded dive trips around.
Komodo
Yes! We have a liveaboard trip on the PA Siren.
If you are interested in this trip or just want to find out more about diving around that area come along on to the Centre Wednesday (14 December) night at 6.00 pm. We’ll have the owner of the boat here to tell you all about it and what you can expect to see and do on a trip like that.
For more information on the trip, please see the travel section.
Please send us an email so we can make sure that we have enough seats.
St George Underwater Centre is now an agent for GoPro Cameras.
GoPro make a range of what can be best described as Sports Video Cameras. They are very small, lightweight, capable of shooting high definition video (up to 1080p) and come with a housing that is waterproof to 60 metres. They can also take photos up to a resolution of 11MP (depending on the model).
These cameras are great for diving because they are so small and light. The can be mounted on your mask, worn on your hood or wrist or simply carried for shooting whatever you may encounter.
There are two main models (at least in the interest of divers):
- HD Hero Original
- HD Hero2 Professional
Both shoot video in 1080p, 960p, 720p and WVGA. The original is limited to a wide field of view (127º for 1080p and 170º for the other modes) where as the Hero2 allows the video to be shot in on of three different fields (170º, 127º and 90º) of view in all video modes. A field of view of 170º is almost as wide as a 10mm fisheye lens on a digital SLR camera – that’s a very wide angle of view. A FOV of 90º is still quite wide but closer to a 17mm lens on a DSLR.
The original GoPro Hero HD next to a 50c piece to show the size.
Both cameras have a battery life of around 2.5 hours when shooting in 720p/60 fps mode. i.e. you could easily record a whole dive.
For a more detailed comparison, see: Product Comparison: HD HERO2 & HD Hero Cameras
The cameras don’t come with a screen but you can buy them as an optional accessory. The screen fits onto the back of the camera making it marginally fatter and also includes a replacement rear door for the housing. Unless you plan on wearing the camera on your mask or hood, a screen is a good idea for framing your shots.
The original GoPro Hero HD with the optional screen attached.
With the screen attached and switched on the battery life is reduced however it will still record 720p/60 for up to 1.25 hours, more then long enough for a single dive.
Another recommended accessory is a corrective flat port on the front of the housing. By default the port on the front of housing is curved. This works fine out of the water but underwater can result in less than sharp footage. A few third party companies make an add-on port which does not compromise the seal on the housing. I have installed the BlurFix adapter on my GoPro and I now get very sharp footage. The added advantage of the BlurFix adapter is that it uses a standard lens filter as the port so a coloured filter can be used to correct for the loss of red light underwater when shooting with natural light.
GoPro Hero HD in housing with BlurFix adapter.
The quality of the footage on these cameras is exceptional, especially when you consider how small and inexpensive it is. It is comparable to professionally shot footage.
Here’s some footage that was taken on the recent drive trip to Borneo. All expect the last sequence (leaving Kapalai) was shot with the original HD Hero. The last sequence was shot with a Nikon D7000 DSLR.
There are some more videos at St George Underwater’s Vimeo page.
Please call the centre for more information and pricing.
