Posts Tagged ‘melbourne’

Australia is probably not the first place that comes into mind if you think about swimming with sharks. But actually Australia is a great place to swim and dive with sharks.

You can do everything from a simple one-day aquarium shark dive to a several-day live-aboard shark diving tour. You can also do cage diving in Australia.

Do you want to try to scuba dive with grey nurse sharks and wobbygong sharks? Then you should go to South West Rocks, which is voted among the top ten scuba dive sites in Australia. Sheer walls plunge to an average depth of 30 meters in an area that is rarely affected by current.

But the greatest thrill of them all is a great white shark dive. And you do not have to go all the way to South Africa to do it. This special kind of scuba diving can also be done in Australia.

It is possible to go on a great white shark diving expedition from Sydney. But Adelaide and Port Lincoln in South Australia is more popular departure points from tour dive sites with great white sharks.

Those two places are the main departure points for live-aboard great white shark cage dives. From here you head out into the clear blue waters of the Southern Ocean to the Neptune Islands. The main attraction is the great white shark, but you will also see many bird species, dolphins, thousands of fur seals, and the beautiful and rare Australian sea lion.

So if you are on vacation in Australia and you have never tried a cage dive among great white sharks, Australia is a great place to try it for the first time.

If you are not into several days of shark diving expeditions, a more easy way to dive with sharks are in an aquarium. Australia has several places to do that; like Melbourne, Sydney and the Sunshine Coast.

If you are not a certified diver you will normally be offered and introduction to diving in a pool (certified divers can skip this part). After the introduction to diving and the sharks, you can start the actual shark dive in the big tanks of the aquarium. Sometimes you can even feed the sharks. If they like, your family and friends can watch the dive from outside.

So if the thought about great white shark diving scares you a little too much, an aquarium shark dive is a great way to feel the thrill that a close encounter with sharks gives.

If you are going to Australia, you can have a great shark dive; no matter if you choose the ultimate great white shark dive or a more normal aquarium shark dive.

Morten Elm is writing about shark diving in the Shark Diving Guide. Here you can also read more about shark diving in Australia.

South of Cuba in the heat of the western Caribbean, the three Cayman Islands are the visible summits of the Cayman Ridge, an underwater mountain range which drops suddenly into the 7,100 m (22,000 ft) Cayman Trench, separating them from Jamaica.

Grand Cayman is by far the largest. The Sister Islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are mostly a wilderness of fruit trees, orchids and cacti where tranquility and an authentic West Indian culture are the main attractions. Just 145 km (90 ml) to the southwest, Grand Cayman at first resembles nothing so much as a transplanted American urban nightmare.

The capital, George Town, and Seven Mile Beach, its renowned local playground, are full of condos, resorts, satellite dishes and mini-malls. The streets teem with bankers and the faceless suits of the institutions that have made it the world’s fifth largest financial centre.

Five days a week, cruise liners decant up to 22,000 tourists, joining the millions each year whose holidays have given the Cayman Islands the eighth highest GDP per capita in the world.

George Town is so busy, loud, and determinedly up for it, you feel the privateers and pirates of former times have merely put on modern dress in their eagerness to empty your wallet.

In the small towns and villages outside George Town, the atmosphere changes immediately. Grand Cayman’s true self is African-European, deeply Christian, conservative and church-going (there are lots of churches).

The locals are openly friendly and well-mannered, laughing and hospitable. Isolated by the central mangrove wetlands -3,440 hectares (8,500 acres) of lush forests, emerald green parrots and bright orange frogfish, the mainspring of the complex ecology that maintains both the turtle grass and shrimp mounds of North Sound Marine Reserve, Rum Point typifies Grand Cayman at its best.

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