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Dive 255: This is Bliss!
Dear Critters, Dive 255 was honestly the most magical dive of my life! Though we hadn’t made plans to dive today, my buddy LP contacted me early this morning with an offer I just couldn’t refuse;...
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I Filmed a UFO!!!
Dear Critters, People often ask me if I believe in UFOs – Underwater Fabulous Objects? Of course I do! In fact, I managed to capture video footage of an extraordinary UFO on my very last dive! When my...
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Can Scuba Really Cure Cancer?
Dear Critters, I’m pretty sure no-one has ever done any research in this area, but in my game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’, scuba beats cancer :-) Every dive I do makes me feel more alive. When people...
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Dive 256: Brrrrrrrrr!!!
Dear Critters, Today Spunky Abe took the day off work to take me diving at Flinders. We got brain freeze the minute we entered the water which was 12 degrees celcius but felt like it was 2 degrees. It...
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Dive 257: Nudis & Punks!
Dear Critters, I kid you not – today’s cold wintery dive with my buddy LP was filled with nudis and punks! By nudis, I’m referring to nudibranchs, those gorgeous decorative sea slugs that Blairgowrie...
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Dive 259: Rye Pier
Dear Critters, In some ways I wish that octopuses, stingrays, cuttlefish and sharks would magically appear on every dive. But most of the time, I am a Melbourne pier diver, and the truth is that on...
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Dive 260: Octopus, Shark, Ray & Dragons!
Dear Critters, Before every dive, my buddy LP and I make wishes for critters, and today’s dive at Flinders Pier definitely did not disappoint! A stunning octopus was climbing a pylon; a draughtboard...
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Dive 261: A Faceful of Fish
Dear Critters, I was thrilled when Geoffrey Whitehorn contacted me on Friday night and asked if I was up for a dive on Saturday. It had been a very difficult week with some truly ick news about my...
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Dive 262: Some Days You Just Need a Cuddlefish …
Dear Critters, Some weeks are so strange and surreal. Like when you leave work on Wednesday afternoon to get the results from your CT and PET scans the day before. And your oncologist tells you that...
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Dive 263: Happiness Is …
Dear Critters, After getting rotten news about my health last week, it seemed more than appropriate to cross ‘Introduce My Baby Brother to Scuba’ off my Bucket List today, before I begin palliative...
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Dive 264: Sea Lion Adventure
Dear Critters, I celebrated finishing my first palliative Quad Shot of radiation on Friday with a very special dive treat on Saturday. Spunky Abe took LP, Julie Bear and me out on his boat to...
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Dive 265: Octopus High 5
Dear Critters, I must confess that lately I have begun to feel a little lost. After many years of working in a job that I loved and now being unable to work due to terminal illness, I am forced to...
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Dive 266-278: Great Barrier Reef Bucket List Adventure
Spunky Abe, me and our new best friend, a huge Potato Cod at Osprey Reef – Photo courtesy of Max @ Mike Ball Expeditions Dear Critters, I am excited to share a few photos with you in this post from my...
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Dive 279: Octopus Encounter
Andrew Schulze from London meets our favourite Flinders Octopus Dear Critters, Please scroll down for an amazing video of our octopus encounter yesterday at Flinders Pier (taken by my awesome dive...
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Shark Feeding Frenzy!
Dear Critters, Many people ask me ‘Aren’t you afraid of sharks?’, and as a girl who has had cancer four times in four years and who recently has been told that her condition is terminal, I have to...
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Dive 280: Short and Sweet, Like Life Itself
Dear Critters, Is every dive extraordinary? No. And yes. This question is like asking, is every day extraordinary? Or is every breath extraordinary? Of course they are. Some days and dives and breaths...
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Dive 281: Death of a Friend
Dear Critters, Last weekend, my best buddy LP caught this extraordinary footage of the resident draughtboard (aka swell) shark of Flinders Pier, playing with a bottle and hunting for fish: Nothing like...
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Sea Snake Mating Dance
Dear Critters, What do you fear? I’m not sure what I fear anymore. When people describe me as fearless, I have to think very hard of reasons why they might be wrong. Remember that old saying ‘What...
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Dive 282: Pink Dragon Eggs
Dear Critters, It has taken me over a week to write this post. After my buddy discovered yet another massacred and mutilated draughtboard shark, I honestly just really didn’t feel up to writing. My...
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Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions
Dear Critters, Lately I’ve been having lots of Bucket List dive adventures. (According to my oncology team, there’s not a whole lot of time left in my bucket, so I’ve been jumping on as many planes...
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Great White Shark Video
Dear Critters, What is on your Bucket List? Within the space of a week, I managed to cross the two biggest critters off mine: mixing with the magnificent manta rays at Stradbroke Island and playing...
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Great White Tumour Biopsy Video!
Dear Critters, My ears instantly pricked up when on my recent Great White Shark expedition, I heard shark expert Andrew Fox declare ‘I’m on the lookout for one of the sharks that has a large tumour...
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Dive 299: In Tribute to My Friend Ivy
Dear Critters, Yesterday morning, my dive buddies and I entered the waters of Flinders Pier at 10:30am, the precise moment at which my dear friend Ivy took her final breath on this earth after her...
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Video: Diving the Babata Sinkhole, Solomon Islands
Dear Critters, To celebrate the new year, our anniversary and my Dive 300 together, Spunky Abe and I went to the Solomon Islands (east of Papua New Guinea and northwest of Vanuatu, where we first...
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Video: A Blue-Ringed Octopus (and more!) for My Birthday
Dear Critters, You may think it strange that for my birthday, I wished for a blue-ringed octopus. Despite the fact that last week I patted a rhinoceros and a madagascan tree boa, hand-fed three...
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Tasseled Anglerfish Gallery
Dear Critters, Blog Entry of Dive 318: The last week of diving in Melbourne has been some of the best I have ever done. Over the past three or four dives, I have encountered giant stingrays, a...
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Video: Octopus Waltz
Dear Critters, As promised, here’s a video my dive buddy Mark ‘LP’ Jones and I filmed recently of him dancing with an octopus (literally moments after we got the chance to play with a beautiful big...
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Video: The Happy Hunter (Blue Ringed Octopus)
Dear Critters, Recently I had an extraordinary encounter with a hunting blue-ringed octopus at Blairgowrie Pier. I have encountered these adorable creatures quite a few times, though usually they are...
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Video: Stingray Encounter
Dear Critters, Just as I turned my camera from video to stills to capture another image of the blue-ringed octopus as it hunted across the sandy ocean floor, I felt an unfamiliar black nose press...
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Video: Angel Shark
Follow Pink Tank Scuba on Facebook Dear Critters, Recently I had the most incredible weekday dive at Blairgowrie Pier in Melbourne with six other divers. The objective of the dive was to see whether we...
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Whyalla Giant Cuttlefish
Follow Pink Tank Scuba on Facebook Dear Critters, Last weekend Spunky Abe and I took a 14 hr road trip to visit the beginning of the giant cuttlefish mating aggregation in Whyalla, South Australia. Our...
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Let’s Go Adventures, Nelson Bay
Dear Critters, The gorgeous marina of Nelson Bay, Port Stephens I had been wanting to visit Nelson Bay in Port Stephens, NSW for quite some time, due to their excellent citizen science Nudi Fest events...
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My Most Extraordinary Marine Animal Encounter
Dear Critters, Today I must share with you the story behind one of the most extraordinary critter encounters I have ever experienced. “Make a wish,” I invited my dive buddy Ruth as we entered the...
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Spanish Dancers: The Biggest Nudibranchs in the World!
Dear Critters, Have you ever added something extraordinary to your Bucket List, only to cross it off 24 hours later? A buzz went through the Beqa Lagoon Resort dining room. ‘Have you seen Andy’s video...
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Video: Spider Crab Disco
Dear Critters, Have you ever been to a spider crab disco? It’s both exciting and hilarious! Thousands of eager crabs line up in anticipation outside the disco door, with bouncers to make sure...
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Journey to Atlantis
Dear Critters, Call me crazy, but last month I literally spent 8 days under water in Sabang Beach, Puerto Galera in the Philippines. I did 3-5 dives each day (31 in total), and despite the valet...
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Every Day is a Pearl
Dear Critters, Today, I wore the pearls I bought on my dive trip to the Philippines last month as a Mother’s Day gift for my step-mother. (It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t bear to part with them,...
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Dive 248 Dragons&Sharks
Dear Critters, My name is PT and I am a Diveaholic. It has been 24 days since my last dive in the warm waters of the Philippines. This morning I finally had the long-awaited chance to re-enter the...
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My Shark Attack Scars
Dear Critters, Ok – so it wasn’t actually a shark …(but if you are here to see sharks, please watch some of my other sharkey encounters with Great Whites and Tiger Sharks through to draughtboard...
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Dive 250: In Winter!
Dear Critters, For me, every dive is a milestone. One year ago today, I was in hospital during an agonising three week stint; I had just been moved from the Intensive Care Unit after two major...
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Wrong Side of the Ocean
Dear Critters, Did you ever get the feeling that you weren’t quite where you were meant to be? A lot of people like to go to the beach, but to me it just seems totally unnatural to sit on sand! I need...
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Dive 254 Crab Farewell
Dear Critters, Today I dived with my best buddy LP for our final chance to say goodbye to all of the lovely crabs that had survived the annual migration to Rye Pier; they are now headed back out to...
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Celebrating Over 500 Dives Despite Cancer (video, images and story)
Dear Critters – this article was originally published in Dive Log Australasia magazine (June 2016 edition) Recently I celebrated my Dive 500, which qualifies me as something of a newcomer to the world...
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Underwater Adventure in Bali
Dear Critters, I hope you enjoy this gallery of images from my recent ‘Scuba Vs Tumour’ adventure in Bali, Indonesia. Please scroll down for my article on this trip and stay tuned for AMAZING video...
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Romeo and Jellyette
Dear Critters, This week as I celebrated Dive 553, I stumbled upon several gorgeous lion’s mane sea jellies under one of my favourite local piers. I felt very privileged to be able to share the...
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Stingrays Gallery (Pics & Video)
*** PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR IMAGES AND VIDEOS *** Dear Critters, Just like sharks got an eternally bad wrap when Steven Speilberg depicted them as monsters in 1975, most people now automatically...
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Cuttlefish Images and Videos
Dear Critters, Follow Pink Tank Scuba on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Thank you for joining me on my ‘Scuba Vs Tumour’ adventures! I hope that you enjoy this latest cuttlefish gallery to which new...
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Gallery: Fish Images
Dear Critters, Follow Pink Tank Scuba on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Thank you for joining me on my ‘Scuba Vs Tumour’ adventures! I hope that you enjoy this latest gallery of pretty fishes to...
View ArticleInterview with The Dodo
Dear Critters, I don’t often talk about cancer anymore. Having been originally diagnosed in 2010, then rediagnosed in both 2013 and 2014 (when I was told I could not be cured and completed palliative...
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