Day 130.
Matheson Bay w / the Pod.
Today I found some sea treasure on my way out to the island half buried in the sand - A DIVE BELT!! It was the material/pockets type and little corroded but I managed to get the strap locked into the buckle ready to carry back home and claim my prize. It had a LOT of weight in it (I guessed 6-8kg) and I was already wearing 4kgs on my own belt, so when I went back down to pick it up I just stayed on the bottom, I couldn’t get up - haha!
I wasn't about to give up that easily for two reasons: 1) we never leave human crap in the ocean if we can help it 2) FREE weights!!! So I went down again, grabbed it and pushed off the bottom hard, finning furiously till I got to the surface. I managed to stay there by kicking myself upright and keeping my lungs full for extra buoyancy. Hmmm, this was going to be tricky. Its about a 400m swim back to shore so I decided to drop it off on a rock ledge and go for a look around (found sea grass, a sea hare with its eggs and piper floating in the mist) before starting the big swim in. You can see the dive belt on the rock in the sea hare pic.
I’m not gonna lie, I pretty much hyperventilated the whole way in, kicking vigorously upright and on a slight angle forward while taking sips of breath to keep my buoyancy up, but I made it back to shore victorious. When I went through the belt to empty the weights (6.5kg - SCORE!!) there was a teeny shrimpy in there, who I quickly popped back in the water.
All in all, a great start to the day :)