SOCIAL AND AOWC COMPLETION 

Congratulations to Daniel James who has now completed all diving components of his Advanced Course. Daniel completed his Open Water and most of his Advanced Course during the Marine Studies trip with Mudgee High School last December - only needing to complete his UW navigation exercises. 

Althought the visibility was a bit down due to the low level high tides, we were able to complete double dives on the tide in excess of 70 mins each. This is a benefit of the small water movements at this time of the lunar cycle. The water temperature was a very balmy 23C!

Some of the highlights included: 4 species of shark, 4 species of rays, slipper crays (lobster), seahorses, 2 species of catfish, numerous nudibranchs and bubble shells the usual gloom octopus and the blue lined octopus (a species of blue ringed octopus). Of course there was the usual cuttlefish, schools of roughies, mado, stripies, wrasse, and kingfish.

Below is some random pics Grant took on the weekend.

Blessed with clear water at 29C - 30C the two week trip to Beqa Lagoon Fiji exceeded expectations.
We stayed at the beautiful Uprising Beach Resort, set on the sandy beaches of Beqa Lagoon and were very well looked after. Brandon and the staff at Aqua-Trek were highly professional, friendly and knowledgable regarding the sharks and the other exceptional diving available at Beqa Lagoon. 

We completed a total of 10 shark dives. We were greeted by the following 6 species: Tiger, Bull, Sickleback Lemon, Tawny Nurse, White Tip Reef and Black Tip Reef sharks! Most sharks were up to 3m except for the tiger shark which was between 3.5 and 4m!!!!! It was pretty thrilling to have the tiger shark glide about 6 inches above our heads as Bridget and Grant patted its belly!

As well as the shark dives, Beqa is also world reknowned for the prolific and colourful soft corals and huge and plentiful gorgonian fans and we were not disappointed.

During our stay, Uprising Resort was the major sponsor and accommodation for a number of Rugby 7's teams from around the world. The competition being the Uprising International 7's Competition. Unfortunately there were no Aussie teams this year as they were at a similar competition in Darwin. In addition to the Uprising team, there were teams at the resort from New Zealand including a Maori team, New Caledonia, Samoa and France. In all there were 16 teams in the competition. Whilst the French certainly looked the part, they failed to win a game with a for and against score of ZERO to over 150! They were great sports and the coach really stirred the crowd up during the games in Suva.

OPEN WATER COURSE