January 2024 – Jetty Dive Debrief
Welcome to the January 2024 Jetty Dive Debrief! This is our newest addition to the blog – the “debrief”. Here we are going to let you know how the water has been, what the season showed us, any interesting or noteworthy details, and what we’ve achieved as a shop!
This is a mega catch-up post! We’ve had a very busy few months over the summer and so the debrief was on the waaay-back-burner (probably off the burners all together!). We haven’t debriefed since september, so there may be a bit to catch up on!
In the shop, a few big things have happened!
Firstly, we got a new boat! We’ve been so hectic and busy we have barely talked about it… but we said farewell to “2Wild” and welcomed the newest addition to the fleet “So Wild”! It features an impressive “Z-Bow” which helps it cut through the water and makes for an extra smooth ride!
The design of SoWild was based entirely on Megawild, because we love the layout of Mega! Plus it features our spectacular purple roof and bench seat.
We’ve been so busy we haven’t really taken any pictures of SoWild! We’ll get there!
Secondly, we also said farewell to our beloved instructor Stuart! Stu and his wife moved to the big smoke mid January. We were all super sad to see him go, and are so thankful for the time we’ve had him work for us and all the fun memories! We hope to see him back diving with us in the future.
Seasonal Marine Life Activity:
We’ve got 4 months to catch up on so this is not going to be the most in-depth summary!
October
For October, we had the usual suspects of Grey Nurse Sharks! We saw them on every dive we did for the month, some days seeing a dozen! There were spotted Eagle Rays on the 10th and 21st, and a huuuge bull ray on the 16th. There were heaps of turtles all month, but a spectacular 15 Green Sea Turtles on the 30th. We had slipper crays on the 14th and 20th, Octopus on the 14th, 20th, 23rd, and 30th, Yellow boxfish on the 14th, 20th, 23rd and 30th. There was a numb ray spotted on the 15th, Semicircle Angelfish on the 16th, and Peacock Mantis shrimp on the 20th. We also spotted a Whaler on the 23rd.
We also saw the end of our Whale Season in october!
November
November continued the trend with lots of Grey Nurse Sharks, but the real stars of the show were the Hammerheads! Our divers were lucky enough to see them on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 16th, and 24th! We also saw the last of the Humpback Whales for the year on the 16th, and some Minke Whales and Dolphins on the 24th!
December
In December the fun with Hammerheads continued! They were spotted on the on about half of our dives for the month. Most notably on the 7th where the divers were lucky to see a big school of hundreds of schooling hammerheads!
We also saw a Silky shark on the 3rd, Dusky Whaler on the 4th and 16th, and more whalers on the 7th.
We spotted Pygmie leather jackets and angelfish on the 7th, and some QLD groper on 8th and 21st. On the 16th we saw three Semicircle Angelfish. A few divers also spotted a Reef Manta on the 18th – the first Manta of the warmer weather! We had sharks galore on the 20th with Sandbar sharks, more Dusky Whalers, Bronze Whalers, an Oceanic Blacktip, and a bullshark! We saw Shovelnose on 9th 24th and 26th. Plus, the new most southern recording of A Cockatoo Waspfish on the 29th, spotted of course by Nathan.
We were so lucky to see Hammerheads so consistently this year, especially all throughout December!
January
In January, the shark sightings settled! We saw Grey Nurses in smaller numbers and no hammerheads (they’re not a common sighting in the summertime!). We also spotted some Clown Triggerfish on the 4th, and more Semicircle Angelfish on the 8th and 27th. Plus, a very cool (and dangerous) Blue-Lined Octopus on the 9th and 17th. On the 17th we saw our first Leopard Shark of 2024 (We saw one in December in 2023!)! We also saw a leopard shark on the 18th, four of them on the 19th, and another on the 21st. Definitely not as many as last year, but nothing to laugh at! There were about a dozen whalers on the 19th, and on the 30th we saw our resident painted angler again!
Certifications
PADI Open Water Divers
Congratulations to our newly certified PADI Open Water Divers:
Adam, Aisleen, Amy Angus, Anika, Ashton, Audrey, Axel, Brad, Bronwyn, Callum, Cas, Cecilia, Coby, Connor, Cooper, Daniel, Darren, Deanna, Domenic, Ethan, Eve, Evie, Greg, Ifra Jade, James, Jamika, Jesse, Jordan, Jorja, Justin, Kyla, Laurence, Lihue, Lisa, Logan, Louis, Lukas, Maddison, Madeleine, Mathew, Nathan, Noah, Owen, Poppy, Robert, Saila, Sasha, Sharyn, Shirley, Steven, Sydney, Thomas, Ulrike, Yohanna.
– Good work, divers!
Congratulations also to Amanda for being certified as a PADI Scuba Diver!
PADI Advanced Open Water Divers
Congratulations to our newly certified PADI Advanced Open Water Divers:
Aidan, Anna, Anthony, Courtney, David T, David O, Elliott, Georgia, Jenson, Jill, Liam B, Liam Hawkins, Manel, Nadia, Nikita, Shirley, Summa, Susie. – Congratulations!
We also certified these divers in their Enriched Air Nitrox course:
Amy, Anthony, Ashley, Celysce, Courtney, Dani, David T, David W, Elliott, Eric, Fredrik, Jo, John, Liam B, Liam H, Matt, Mattie, Meg, Nelson, Nicolas, Stewart, Tammy. Great work!
We also certified Rose as a Deep Diver – Conratulations!
And congratulations to our newest certified Rescue Diver Lilly, Lucy, Meg, Rin, and Travis!
Conditions
Visibility
The visiblity in January was unfortunately trending on the lower side, apart from a few consistent days in the middle of the month, and a wonderful day of amazing 40m visibility on the 21st (Deb’s birthday, she must be good luck!)
Temperature
The temperature did fluctuate a bit more throughout January than normal, especially at the start of the month!
Sustainability and the environment
This section we are dedicating to showing what steps we are taking to reduce our environmental impact. It might include incentives we have implemented or tried through the month, or programs we have participated in. We intend to expand upon our conservation efforts page with everything we have implemented in store – as we are doing much more than this page shows!
Woohoo! I first mentioned recycling old wetsuits in December 2022, and one full year later – we have sent away our first box! We sent the box to “Upparell” – the only textile recycling service in Australia that allowed Wetsuits (Neoprene) and participation from a regional area. Upparell recycles all manner of textiles, either through reuse, repurposing, or recycling, saving waste going to landfill!
This box was supported by customer Kris, who donated some money to cover some wetsuits he wished to be recycled. Thank you, Kris!
Unfortunately with the cost of postage wetsuit recycling is still not something we can offer for free. One box to be sent away can hold maximum of about 5 wetsuits (depending on the thickness of the suits). We are more than happy to take your wetsuits to send to be recycled – but for us to facilitate this, we require a $5 donation per suit to cover a portion of postage costs.
If you’d like your wetsuit to be recycled feel free to send us a message or pop in and we can organize this!
Photo of the Month Quarter
Want to be featured in our photo of the month? Send your submissions through to [email protected], with “Photo of the Month Submission” as your subject and I’ll pick the best one for our debrief and email newsletter.
The Month Ahead!
Happy February!
March is traditionally the warmest month of the year, so we are exciting to be steaming towards that! We haven’t seen quite the numbers of leopard sharks that we did last year, so we have our fingers crossed that we’ll start to see some more as the water warms up!
We have been running a lot of courses over the past few months, and looking at our books this isn’t going to stop anytime soon! If you’re looking at beginning your Open Water Diver Course, definitely make sure you book in advance!
Other than that, we have a couple of bookings from other dive centres coming up, so we are definitely keeping busy!
Newsletter
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If you have anything you would like to hear about in this debrief, or in our newsletter, or even any suggestions for another name for this debrief, please contact us and let us know!
Thanks for reading the February 2024 Jetty Dive Debrief! We appreciate you 🙂
About the Author
Tara is Jetty Dive’s Office Manager and IT Lady, Social Media Queen, Crazy-Fish-Lady, and as she likes to say – “Self-Appointed CEO”. You’ll find her sitting at her desk surrounded in pink, but happiest either on or under the water.
