Freedivers Furry Frolic

A Winter Freedive with Local Marine Life on the Bass Strait Coast

Words & Photographs by Marlon Quinn

Lolling about behind the shore break, the torpedo like form of the seal rolled and ambled about, catching Christine’s eye.

We’d worked together as Eco Tour Guides for years on my charter boat, taking non-swimming swimmers out into the sea to snorkel with Weedy Seadragons, to flap about with Australian Fur Seals, and immerse with wild Bottlenose Dolphins.

Soon Christine would be embarking upon a new dimension, beginning her training with me as a PADI Freediver Instructor, ready to share the underwater world with passionate ocean adventurer newcomers in a deeper way.

In the mid-morning, we watched the dark shape of the seal from afar, bobbing away holding position in my little 4.7m ex-Navy Zodiac boat, the SWIFT, in the calmer waters of Bass Strait.

The behaviour of the seal confused us, as it didn’t exhibit the thousands of instances we’d seen of seals playing, frolicking, resting and recovering, fishing, and fighting, in our daily travels at Popes Eye, the Pile Light and Chinaman’s Hat in Port Phillip.

Torn between going in closer to check it out and firing up the SWIFT to zoom out into deeper waters and begin our freediving fun dive, the thing that kept us there was this perplexing feeling. Was the seal hurt and injured, or just off in its own little world playing near the shallows, far away from prying eyes, except for our fixated ones?

Whatever was happening with that big ol’ furry seal, it just didn’t fit our frontal lobe reference points.

Directing the bow towards shore, some 500 metres away, we crept in very closely, barely making progress as the revs spun up over the idle of the Mercury 60hp outboard.

Keeping an eye on the dark shape as best we could, the white water crests and the shining of the morning sun on the sea surface obscured our lock-on. Half way there, and already it was gone. We returned to idle, just drifting now, not wanting to go closer to shore if we didn’t have to, there was fun to be had elsewhere, and this was becoming a distraction from bolder plans. But we still couldn’t understand the behaviour of this beast, it just didn’t make sense.

Seconds ticked. We were in about 8 metres depth, and the water looked welcoming. Calm seas with lower swell, a breath of wind, and the warming sun, these were a confluence of factors that rarely happen out in the remote beaches we scoured. If you could line up 10 of these days on the calendar in a year, you’d be doing better than the casinos.

We powered down the SWIFT and prepared ourselves to dive. We figured that if we couldn’t find it, the beast could come and find us.

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