A mere 17 years later I returned to dive the fabulous 300 metre long Exmouth Navy Pier. Nothing seemed to have changed, it was still teeming with a rich variety of marine life and remains an outstanding dive. I was having mixed fortunes. Dive conditions were unusually good with underwater visibility of 10 to 15 metres, considerably more than usual. However I had a problem with my dome port which meant that any wide angle shots had to be taken through my flat port, adversely affecting the image quality and the Dive Gods were not smiling on me. I had intended to double dive the pier four times but the first of these double dives was cancelled due to adverse weather conditions and the fourth day due to a Navy ship unloading at the pier. Still the two days of double diving the pier were really brilliant. On the first of these days I dived it with Tamara Terranova of Dive Ningaloo, the second with Tanya Kat. I won’t leave it another 17 years to dive it again.
The second of these Navy Pier cancellations was on my final days diving and I didn’t want to end the trip on a disappointing note. So I set off to Learmonth Jetty with Timmy McCarthy, this small jetty being located 33 kilometres south of Exmouth. Nowadays the jetty is used for servicing prawn trawlers and for recreational fishing and I think in flat conditions, it would be possible to take some excellent underwater images. However it was windy, the sea very choppy and the underwater visibility just 0.75 metres to 1 metre. Timmy and I abandoned the dive after 40 minutes, we should have abandoned it far sooner!
Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia April 2022
Video by Norm Yixuan, Exmouth Dive Centre and Malcolm Nobbs.