September SCUBA news

Hooray for Spring!!! I was beginning to think that Winter was never going to finish!!!  And what a long, cold, miserable, grey Melbourne Winter it was!
Anyway, I shouldn’t whinge too much, I at least managed a couple of tropical get aways over Winter.
Our most recent getaway was as you know, to Tonga, and what an incredible place it is!  I would go back there in a heart beat, Tonga was a great place to visit, there isn’t a lot to criticise about the place.  The people are fabulous, the accommodation was great, the food, the ambiance, the diving and the bucket list item… Snorkelling with Humpback whales was UNREAL!!!
I’m very fortunate to have been able to share these experiences with dive club members and my family.
I don’t want to sound negative, but based on what I’m reading in the media today, our government doesn’t seem to have the “cojones” to stand up to the Japanese government when it comes to their so called “Scientific Whaling” and is simply blowing a lot of hot air, using their “Spin Doctors”  to tell us how much they have done through the courts but has continued to refuse to send Navy vessels to Antarctica to protect whales from being taken from a sanctuary and has simply left SEA SHEPHERD to do all the work.
No matter how anyone looks at this, killing whales diminishes their population, but, at least my children will be able to grow up telling their children that they once swam with these majestic giants of the sea.
Whilst on the subject of children, one of my personal highlights of the trip was the fact that I dived with 2  youngsters, Connor and my son Jack.  Although Jack had equalisation problems and couldn’t do his boat dives, it wasn’t like that for Connor and he was my dive buddy on those dives.  I must say that I was blown away by the level of skills and his level headed, conservative attitude and approach to his diving along with his curiosity for the marine world with the highlight being when we encountered not one, but 2 turtles on a boat dive.
It is amazing to see how kids’ confidence grows with positive experiences in the water, such as my youngest boy who loves his snorkelling as long as he can see the bottom… It certainly wasn’t like that on his first Humpback encounters, at the start of the snorkel, Lachlan would be on all fours on my back peering over my shoulder into the blue abyss looking for whales below us but by the end of that day, he was snorkelling completely independent of me!  The future of diving and snorkelling is in good hands with such enthusiasm, passion, curiosity and care as displayed by the boys on this trip!