Scuba Diving Certified.

So I just finished my scuba diving certification for my open water course with Padi. Stan got certified at 14 years old, so now we can dive together. Anyway, it was really neat to get my certification done in Australia, everything was so exotic. To certify, I did 4 dives off the coast of Sydney. I went to Gordon's bay by Coogee beach & then the last dive was at Shelly beach off of Manly. I am going to tell you about the last dive since I just got back. The water was great and I got to see some really cool things. First, sting rays! The floor was speckled with sting rays (who were covered in the sand) and the better I got at recognizing them the sooner I realized that they were EVERYWHERE! Second, fish! Lots of pretty white and black and shiny fish traveling in groups! Third, sea horses. I can't remember (but I think they are the dragon seahorses), anyway they are specific to Australia and people come from all over the world to see them. The area also has blue ring octopus, but we didn't see any--and yes they are deadly.Later we went over to the left hand side under some cliffs. This is where the sharks were sleeping. I counted 5, but my instructor said he lost count...I guess I missed some. The first time he came up to this huge rock and looked under it and then motioned for me to come (he was my buddy), so I came over and since I am a beginner I have a hard time controlling my buoyancy, so I was kicking all over and finally got my head down to see under this rock only to see a shark. It was a wobbegong shark (you can wiki that) and there is a good chance that I could have kicked this shark in the face had the current not been pushing me away from the rock! I backed up only to see another shark (about 6 feet) sleeping on the floor. Then I decided to swim up and off the ground. We continued onto this place with lots and lots of big smooth rocks and down inside the crevasses, were the rest of these sharks. I always thought I would be afraid of sharks if I saw them, but since they were sleeping it was really neat to just watch them and know that they weren't watching me :-)

For the record, all these pictures are from scuba divers at Shelly beach off Manly...so this is exactly where I was!!!! Also, those pretty yellow leaves underwater they are not that awesome, they are covered in thorns.