Leaving Saturday night we anchored on Curtin Artificial Reef and the boys got down some serious "catching up", beers in hand....
On Sunday morning we woke up slowly and dived Curtin on the high tide at 10am. I have been practising with my new 105mm lens, and have been having a fairly good success rate with it so I enjoyed the time on a familiar site.
Later we dived the St Paul in 40 metres. The current was a wee bit stiff for me, and the anchor was not on the wreck, but a distance away out on the sand. At 36 metres I decided it was all too much hard work, and headed back to the surface. Aaron carried on with Mick and had an enjoyable dive.
Last dive of the day was the old iron barque "The Aarhus" in 20 metres. Five of us went down together, with Aaron and Mick deciding to sit that dive out. I had an excellent dive, even finding the resident leaf scorpion fish which proved to be very photogenic.
I was enjoying myself so much I opted to stay down about five minutes longer than everyone else. As I turned towards the anchor chain I caught sight of a VERY large fish at the other end of the wreck. Panic immediately engulfed me as I realised it was a
largish Tiger Shark! I immediately began impersonating part of the wreckage, while my heart raced and breathing went into overtime. What should I do?
I knew if I stayed for too long breathing that fast I would soon be out of air (I was at the end of my dive anyway). Opting for a moderately rapid (!) ascent I looked back to see the shark swimming gracefully away. I don't think it even noticed me!
As it vanished into the blue, I thought to myself "Hmmm, that could be a leopard shark (totally harmless)". By the time I arrived on the surface I had calmed down a bit and had started berating myself for losing my cool. The boys all laughed and said, "Yeah Al, it was probably a Leopard Shark". Although no-one had actually seen one on the Aarhus before and Tigers were known to be around the area.
On viewing some footage of Tiger and Leopard Shark behaviour and swimming movement, I am now convinced it was definately a Tiger!
I won't be diving on my own again for a while.....that's for sure.
