diving with sharks!

still have all my limbs! wonderful weekend up at port stephens...the first day we had two boat dives right off in the morning (6 am wake ups! woot!)...within the first hour of boating we saw a pod of about 20 dolphins, who flew alongside our boat for quite a while. they were soooo close and so amazing, it was awesome. i've seen more cool things in the wild here in australia in the period of four months than i have my entire life...i love it. then, we did our first dive, saw some cool sponges, fed some wrasse (a huge friendly fish that can be found almost anywhere in australia) a sea urchin, came up for lunch (which i passed on, except for the soup, cause i was QUITE motion sick), then went for another dive. saw SHARKS. didn't poke them. came out alive.
sadly, no pictures...hopefully i can get some pics off one of the guys who had an underwater camera, but i couldn't spend the money to buy one (20 bucks for the camera and then 15 for the developing!)....however, i've posted two pics of a couple animals i saw...(grey nurse sharks and pufferfish), courtesy of the internet. the waves were so strong i thought that i was going to get pushed into a shark, but i managed to hold onto the plants with a tight grip, so it was all good. they really came quite close and would stare at you. luckily i was fighting off bouts of nausea, so i wasn't focusing too much on getting eaten. btw, i found out that if you throw up underwater, the sharks won't eat you.
then, we headed back to our place and chilled and ate lots of food. complained a lot about having to put our wet wetsuits back on (not as bad as you'd think). that night, went on a night dive....it was exactly how i had pictured scuba diving to be like in the beginning. you go down, and it's a pitch black abyss, except for whatever your torch lights up. the colours are awesome, and there are so many different animals out at night. we saw octupi, cuttlefish, tons of fish, and cool things that glow in the dark if you poke them lots. and THEN, near the end of the dive, our divemaster indicated for us to follow him, and we could see him poking something behind a rock, and then he brought his hands up and there was a BLOWFISH. i yelling something into my reg cause i was so excited (funny enough, everyone else seemed to have heard me underwater), and then we played with it. it was so ridiculous, the poor guy can't do ANYTHING after it blows up....his little fins and tail are completely useless. soo, you can put him upsidedown, you can push him up and down, you can spin him in little circles and there is nothing he can do but bob around....it was awesome. it was bigger than the picture i have posted, about 20inches in circumference probably, and it was the highlight of my trip...i'm addicted to night dives now.
the next day we woke up early again and did a shore dive in halifax park, and it was gorgeous. i wasn't going to do the dive cause my ears were bothering me, but i popped a few sudafed and all was good. we went to about 25 m and saw moray eels (don't touch them), rock cod (stonefish...don't step on them), numb ray (don't go near them, they have electric shock), and we even got to play with an octopus....we managed to get it out from under its rock and he was wrapping his legs around our hands and everything...they are STRONG buggers....our dive master had to brace himself on the rock so that he didn't get pulled under the rock (and beaked...octupus have beaks that are quite sharp). it was wonderful, and when we came up it was even sunny (it had been raining all the previous day), and perfect. i encourage everyone to get their dive certificate....so cool.

p.s. happy mothers day!