PADI Archives - Scuba Dive in Perth Australia

Ammo Jetty Night Dive

Wednesday 1st July – Ammo Jetty Night Dive

Not letting a little bit of rain put us off, we met in the car park to gear up for a night dive at Ammo Jetty.

We had a varied crew. A couple of seasoned locals, two fairly new divers and three recently qualified PADI Open Water Scuba Instructors.

I haven’t been out on a night dive for a long lime and I soon remembered how much I do love it. The underwater world comes alive at night and it gives you a completely different perspective on the dive site. Sandy bottoms that in the day are empty, in the night are peppered with crabs and shrimps. In your torch, the jellyfish shimmer and cuttlefish swim past your mask at close quarter.

Blue Swimmer Crabs defending their patch

We also saw quite a few other things including quite a large Stingray that had been hooked by one of the fishermen on the jetty overhead.

My buddy was kind enough to liberate it and it didn’t hang around after that. The other things we saw were Frog fish, lots of Starfish, a small Port Jackson Shark and a Rock Fish hiding in the soft corals on one of the pylons.

I can’t wait to go out again next week. The current plan is to go out from South Mole (Freemantle)…

PADI Instructor Exam (IE) in Perth WA

Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th June 2015 – Perth PADI Instructor Exam (IE) in Perth WA

Following the past four weeks of study, confined water practice, open water practice and classroom instruction, this weekend the PADI Instructor Exam (IE) is finally upon us.

Saturday was taken up with the written exams, confined water skills, and teaching presentations with Sunday dedicated to the open water. With the West Australian reporting a warning of big waves over the weekend we were thinking we would be in the river, but with the benefit of the shelter of Garden Island, we were able to go to the Rockingham Wreck trail (a local favourite).

Once we got in, the conditions for the open water section were cool at 17 deg C, but at least we didn’t have the rain and hail of last weekend! The visibility wasn’t great but none of us let that get in the way of showing off our stuff. A bit of chop for the rescue exercise just makes it all a bit more realistic!

Ten candidates, all from the IDC at Perth Scuba on the beach afterwards with our instructor, Brandon and the IE (Steve).

A fantastic result as we all passed, so soon we will all be taking PADI Open Water Scuba classes.

PADI IDC (Instructor Development Course) at Perth Scuba

Saturday 6th June to Friday 26th June (Part Time) – PADI IDC (Instructor Development Course) at Perth Scuba

I guess it was always going to happen one day, but this week I decided to enrol on the course to upgrade my PADI DiveMaster card to one that would make me an instructor.

Having had a look around, most places only do the PADI IDC in summer, but as luck would have it, Perth Scuba were running a part time PADI IDC starting on the 6th June.

The IDC is broken down into sections much the same as a PADI Open Water course. Online course materials and assessments from PADI were followed by classroom review and confined water training.

After lots of practice, exams and assessments of our ability to do the 24 skills from the PADI Open Water course, we got the chance to try them all out in Open Water on the last weekend down at the Rockingham Wreck trail. The conditions were poor on the surface with wind, rain and the odd bit of hail, but once we got down the only real problem was that it was a little cold at 15 deg C. The visibility was actually quite good for this site at about 5m which meant Brandon could see all the things we got wrong!

Tomorrow it is on to the IE…

North Coogee Marina Wall Dive

Sunday 31st May 2015 – North Coogee Marina Wall Dive

Today, it seemed like a good idea to go out on a club dive with Perth Scuba as I have signed up with them to do my PADI Instructor Development Course (IDC) with them next month. Club dives are a great way to get back into diving if you haven’t been for a while or if you just want to keep up your skills and meet new people. Best of all they are free (apart from air and equipment if you need it). Being free, however they are always going to be a shore dive and site choice is going to be largely dependent on weather, the group and the lead Dive Master’s personal preference.

The site of choice today was North Coogee Marina Wall. The conditions were a lot better than the last time I came here with almost flat sea and water at 18 deg C. The max depth on the dive was 8.4m with a bottom time of 58 minutes. I used the GPS in my BlackBerry Z10 inside a Cressi Dry Box which from the track I think did remarkably well considering at times there was 8m of water between me and the sky!

North Coogee Wall — North Coogee Marina Wall

At some point I need to correlate the GPS timestamps with the dive profile readings from my computer to work at what depth it does actually loose signal, but given that it shows us quite nicely going around the end of the wall, I think it is probably at around the 8m mark, as most of the dive time was spent below 6m.

In terms of things to see, there are lots of shoals of smaller fish using the rocks for protection. Lots of Toadfish on the sand and a good variety of different puffers. If you look into the holes you can often see Octopus eyes peering back at you.