Dive,dive,dive... friendly encounters in the waters off Shellharbour.
Ben Stubbs gets close to diverse marine life in Shellharbour,including a denizen of the deep.
The theme from Jaws plays in my head as I shine a torch into a cave concealed by a garden of seaweed and see a flash of tail and the shadow of a dorsal fin. Only metres away is a shark whose slumber I've disturbed,but my dive partner,Mick Harris,isn't worried. He's dived off The Gutter at Shellharbour on the NSW south coast thousands of times and says he's seen it all.
As the shark weaves towards us,I feel as if my wetsuit is filled with quick-set cement. I can't move;the shark latches onto my arm. This is not how I expected my first shark attack to go.
Luminous sealife at Shellharbour.
I'm diving with Shellharbour Scuba Centre experts off Bass Point,close to the Bushrangers Bay Aquatic Reserve. Above the water,the coastline is crowded with lines of smokestacks and traffic jams. Harris assures me it is more appealing below the surface.
We pace our jump off as if we are entering a skipping rope;it's all about timing as we splash in and start breathing through our regulators. The Gutter is a three-metre groove off Bass Point's rocks where the current rockets us out to a reef 20 metres below the surface. At 15 degrees,the water seems ice-cream-headache cold despite the five-millimetre suits,booties and hoods.
Schools of yellowtail and a stingray move through the water. We then catch sight of a cuttlefish moving like a pulsing glove. It floats through coral that protrudes like skinny fingers from the rocks. Harris approaches to get a better look. It doesn't like our intrusion,and this odd-looking creature the size of my forearm squirts a trail of dark,claggy ink in our direction to warn us off closer inspection,so we leave and continue on past spongy clumps of coral and curtains of seaweed.
Indonesia,the Solomon Islands and the Philippines rate among Harris's favourite sites,but he says the diverse marine life in these cool-water coves south of Wollongong are always a surprise:sea spiders,turtles and sharks are common sights.
When a blue groper - the golden retriever of the sea - swims to us,Harris pats and scratches its scales. The fish flips in delight. Harris grabs a tiny shellfish from the sand,the peanut of the sea he calls them,and holds it out for the groper. It obliges and nips it from his open palm,then swims around us hoping for more.