Australia Diving - HMAS Brisbane

Mooloolaba

Tuesday 30th December, 2008
 

For those of you that know my dive style, you know I'm not a huge fan of wreck dives.  However, I kept hearing over and over that if I was going to visit the Sunshine Coast of Australia I had to dive the artifical reef created by the sinking of the ex-HMAS Brisbane.  For a little history, the HMAS Brisbane was an Australian destroyer built by the U.S.  It served for Australia for quite a few years, including time in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War.  I'm not sure when it was decommissioned, but in 2005 it was sunk off the coast of Mooloolaba to create a dive attraction.  Well, it's done just that.  It is a beautiful wreck.  I dove with SunReef in Mooloolaba, a high quality dive op.  They run a tight ship, so to speak.  We load a trailer with our gear and head to a local dock to board the boat.  We motor out through the harbor for about 15 minutes then hit the open ocean for a rough 15 minutes out to the mooring buoys that mark the wreck.  Since the seas were a bit choppy to say the least, the plan was to drop in and kick to the anchor line on the front of the boat as quickly as possible and drop right down the line, meeting at 5 msw, rather than on the surface.  After my group of four and requisite dive master were all together, we descended to the wreck.  The vis wasn't all that great (maybe 5-6 msw) so the immensity of the wreck was a bit hard to tell.  But as we went down the side, it was obvious this is a massive wreck.  For the first dive, we stayed on the outside as an "orientation" dive.  We went through a few passageways on the outside, but there was no real penetration.  The wreck was covered in small life.  Hard and soft corals, tunicates everywhere, worms, sponges, and a few nudibranchs.  After we reached 70 bar, we made our way to the line and ascended, taking our safety stop before surfacing.

After a nice surface interval with some tasty cake, we went back down for our second dive.  This dive would be a penetration dive, heading into different areas of the wreck.  Since this is an artificial wreck, it's been cleaned up quite a bit, and there are entrances/exits all over the place.  I never felt closed in where I couldn't get out quickly if I needed.  I certainly don't have wreck training, running lines in low vis, etc.  But this felt comfortable.  On the front of the wreck (bow...?) there were two octopuses hiding in some of the structure.  Very cool!  I haven't seen a single octopus in Thailand in my year and a half, so this was a highlight!  For this dive, we took our safety stop on one of the stacks that is actually at about 5 msw at the top.  As we were hanging out, a small school of batfish came by.  Then as we swam towards the line, two eagle rays decided to swim by.  I was near the end of my air supply, so I didn't chase after them to get a picture, but they were very beautiful!  What a great way to finish a wonderful day of diving.

I don't have any of my critter ID books, so I haven't IDed anything yet.  I'll get to it when I can...

Below are some pictures from the diving.  A few of them turned out alright.  Click on the image to see a larger version. 

(Note: None of the images were "photoshopped" in any way.)

The boat at the dock, unloading the morning divers so we could load our gear for the afternoon.	A cool looking nudibranch.	Feather duster.	Another nudibranch.
One of the octopuses on the front of the wreck.	The vis and picture aren't all that great, but this gives you an idea of some of the structure of the wreck.	One of the many different kinds of tunicates on the wreck.	The second octopus hidden in some structure.
A stonefish sitting on the deck.	Right next to this stonefish...	One of the 5-inch guns, fully encrusted in marine life.	Another tunicate.  They were all over.
And yet another tunicate.  These yellow-speckled tunicates were all over.	Looks like half of an oyster...	And yet another tunicate.  I happen to like taking pictures of these...they don't swim away when I'm trying to click.