Aquatic Adventures

Aquatic Adventures serves Melbourne divers with training and local diving support in a market where the diving is genuinely good and genuinely cold.

Victoria's underwater attractions are not obvious from the surface. Port Phillip Bay contains more than sixty historic shipwrecks and four World War I submarines. The piers on the Mornington Peninsula — Blairgowrie, Rye, Portsea, Flinders — hold weedy seadragons, seahorses, octopus and, in late autumn, the giant spider crab aggregation that draws photographers from around the world.

Pier diving is the accessible heart of it. Shallow, shore-accessible and rich in small life, the piers are where most Victorian divers spend most of their time. They are not trivial, though: fishing line, boat traffic, low light under the structure and tide-driven current all require attention, and shore access removes the boat rather than the hazards.

For training, Victoria produces well-prepared divers precisely because the conditions demand more. A student here learns weighting properly, because a seven millimetre suit makes the consequences of getting it wrong immediately obvious, and learns buoyancy properly because neoprene compression at depth is not subtle.

The corresponding requirement is good instruction. Cold water adds task loading, and a course that rushes a student through it produces someone who is certified but not comfortable.

Port Phillip's piers are diveable in most weather, which makes them the backbone of Victorian diving rather than a consolation. A diver who is comfortable at Blairgowrie and Rye can dive most weekends of the year regardless of what the forecast is doing offshore.