First Dive at Black Rock

Two hours of your morning goes on land: paperwork, a health questionnaire, then a briefing in waist-deep water where you practise three things - clearing your mask, finding a lost regulator, equalising your ears - until they stop feeling strange. Then we walk in from the beach at Black Rock and follow the reef slope down to twelve metres. One instructor per two guests, a hand on your BCD strap for the first ten minutes, off it once you settle. What you actually see: lionfish parked under table corals, a resident moray at eight metres who has been in the same crack for years, clouds of anthias, and on a good day a hawksbill turtle grazing. The honest part: roughly one in ten people cannot equalise on the first attempt. If that is you we surface, try again shallower, and if it still will not clear we call the dive - and the Marine Park fee we have already paid to the gate does not come back. A head cold or blocked sinuses is almost always the culprit, so if you are congested this week, book a later day rather than gambling on it.