March Newsletter available!

Rod & H have been busy putting together the latest JBDC Newsletter. Watch out for it in your letterbox!

Presidents Message

The water has been on the improve for a few weeks now – not before time either. We’re getting 20 to 30m viz outside the bay at the moment, with the temp still around 23 deg. That happens at this time of year. If you have a look at the website for Manly Hydraulics Laboratory, you can see the warm and clear currents that clip JB on their way south.

We got hit suddenly by one of those 2 knot, Cobalt Blue currents last Saturday (11th Mar) just as we were finishing our dive on Crocodile Head. After hooking our gear onto the gear, lines we needed to pull ourselves along the Mermaid line to get back to the boat. Good thing it waited until our deco had finished. With water like this, we prefer to do our deco on the drift, but on this occasion we had Gav’s boat tied off behind ours, so we needed to stay on the anchor. 

We’ve also been enjoying our surface intervals over summer by donning a snorkel and floating around with the local Giant Grey Leather Jackets. If you sit just away from their ledge, you’ll see the more curious ones come out to have a look at you. You can see them quite clearly from the surface on a good day, without interrupting them in any noticeable way at all. It’s very relaxing. I’d suggest this as a less invasive option to paying large amounts of dollars for a charter operator to drop you off with a dozen or more other people who often don’t know how close is close enough.

This brings me to the topic of the dive tax. I spoke with Bill Talbot today. Bill is the Director Threatened Species Unit – he’s the man who actually advises the Minister of Primary Industries on what his decision should be regarding the proposed dive tax. The response summary has been completed, and this document formed the basis for the advice paper that was submitted to the Minister in February (2nd week). The Minister has not yet indicated what his decision is likely to be, so now is a really good time for all divers to be writing directly to the Minister to voice their disgust at the proposal.

I didn’t ask Bill what his advice to the Minister was, but I’m personally confident that it would have been biased in favour of the tax, having witnessed first hand how the DPI’s fundamental justification for the tax has shifted to suit their ever-evolving argument. It moved from ’providing funding assistance for the protection of the Grey Nurse Shark’, to ’providing (unwanted) services and infrastructure to divers’. Bill acknowledged that the money would only be spent on the GNS if divers (ie: the Fund managers who would be representing divers) prefered to spend the tax on the GNS rather than ourselves.

Apparently, that’s why none of the monies from the recreational fishing license gets spent on the GNS – because the fishos aren’t interested in saving the GNS. Although the Minister has the power to intervene and forcibly direct some of these funds into the GNS program, he has never done so. I can only wonder if he’ll likewise abstain from intervening in the allocation of monies from the Dive Tax. With recreational divers not raping, pillaging and plundering the resources ‘belonging’ to the DPI (ie: the environment), I don’t expect that they would have any fear of disaffecting us further. We can’t expect the same respect that the fishing industry receives.

Things have changed for the DPI recently, with the announcements regarding the Great Lakes and the Batemans Marine Parks. The Minister may now be thinking that the additional protection that these parks will be providing the GNS (Tollgate, Montague and Broughten Islands, Seal Rocks) may mitigate the need for the tax.

In the meantime, I heartily recommend that you get out there and make the most of the next few months to come. This is the best time of year for diving the temperate waters of southern NSW. This also may be the last year that you’ll have the opportunity to enjoy open and free access to our oceans.

Don’t forget that David Powter is looking for volunteers to assist with his acoustic tagging of the Port Jackson sharks in April. Check out the social calendar – the hectic schedule continues with heaps of dives, trips away and celebrations. Every week has planned dives, both weekends and week days. Get into it.

Rod Peterlin

President