Out of the murk grew a shape under my torch-beam,almost as if the light itself was creating something as the silt hung there animated around this object.
The object that was the subject of my attention slowly took shape in my subconscious,I knew what this was I just couldn't place it due to its crusted and dilapidated state...
Slowly but surely the image in my beam and the twisted image in my minds eye became one,the stark reality of the fact this object was in fact something from my own child hood fears.
Its wheels had once rolled through the sterile linoleum covered floors....now for those very same rubber wheels to grind to a halt in the dark here in the silt.
Its metal frame had once creaked under load,and felt the spatter of warm sunlight on its bars passing windows in corridors,the sun hitting it only briefly like the clatter of light through old filmstrip....that light and warmth had not been felt in a very long time...
An almost apocalyptic image of destruction,I finned its circumference how this Hospital trolley had come to rest on this deathbed of fine gray emulsion,was nothing short of a mystery...was the patient somewhere down here with us...? .....an accident in a Hospital...some dark secret that had to be concealed in the depths for none to see...? ....or was it simply the stupidity of some knuckle head that had decided to pollute this fine ocean we share...?
Sadly the most likely option is the last one and the Hospital trolley although bizarre was far from the most horrifying thing people have thrown into the Ocean around Miramar Wharf,possibly the worst I found was the Car Battery's....of all the things to chuck deliberately into the ocean that's very high on my list.
Pete also found some un-identified steel drum down there which I wasn't going anywhere near as if I had seen Russian markings I would have been out of there in a heart beat.
Just some of the crap we found down past Miramar Wharf was:
x1 Porcelain mug
x6 Car and Truck batteries
x1 Visa card
x1 Steering rack
x1 Electric blanket
x2 Sacks of poached Paua shells
x1 Hospital trolley
x1 Railway cart
x2 Road signs
x7 Odd steel grates and grilles
x1 Car exhaust
x1 Unidentified steel drum
And enough concrete blocks to build a fortress
Our initial dive plan was to drop into the murky waters to get photographs of some of the garbage under Miramar Wharf,upon our descent into 9m under Miramar Wharf...a fair bit deeper than Burnham Wharf we basically were engulfed in silt,this silts swallowed us up without even a burp!!
We bottomed out in vis that was so bad I had seen it in a long time,it really was pointless so armed with that I decide to "thumb" the dive and that was the end of that,Andy was relieved I think but Pete was raring to go....we didn't quite share his obvious enthusiasm..
Dive #1
Max depth= 9m
Dive duration= 3min
So we decided that if we swam the wall along Chobbam Drive we might at least get 500mm of vis,so we did a bit of a surface swim in the water.
Water that actually smelled of tar...or some kind of pollution...
Anyway we hit the wall and dropped into similar but moderately better conditions and headed off into the darkness,there were some parts of the dive where it suddenly became momentarily so dark that I wasn't sure if we had in fact swum under an overhang or into some kind of overhead environment.
One thing that worried me was the amount of large drains there was in and around the wharves,accidentally swimming down one would be err interesting..
Anyway that wasn't the case..
Most of the dive Pete's torch was completely eaten by this environment so I spent most of the dive finding his Bio-fins,there was a few bumps but I think considering the conditions all went very well.
We only got separated twice on the dive and I though that also was pretty good,the vis was really pretty shyte...
Anyway it was great to get out and enjoy a warm cup of Hot Chocolate with some marshmallows after.
Pete and Something Fishy got some great pics all things considered, hopefully one of them will post some pics...
Dive #2
Max depth= 4m
Dive Duration= 70mins
