Cherubs cave is located a bit over half way up Moreton Island. Legend has it that someone had put a statue of a cherub at the mouth of the cave to mark the location, We haven’t seen it yet and there are reports of it up the sunshine coast somewhere.
This was the location of our first encounter with sharks. Here there were about 6 to 8 Grey Nurse sharks and the video on the Facebook page shows how close we were to them.
Dive at Cherubs Cave on Saturday 12th of August, 2017.We were planning to dive Henderson’s Rock. Northern end and ocean side of Moreton Island (Coral Sea), with a follow-up dive at Cherubs Cave. On board were (in alphabetical order) Danny, Duncan, Harvie and Richard.Approaching the South Passage Bar we noticed that the seas, for the bar, were reasonably calm and the crossing was easy. On exiting the bar, we proceed to head north to Henderson’s Rock and it was not long before we encountered a pod of whales and porpoise/dolphin.Because we were heading into a small head on sea, we were forced to slow down and the whales and dolphins followed us giving a show for over an hour. We stopped two or three times on the way to make the best of it.Arriving at Henderson’s, we took our first dive and then had lunch while we took the required one-hour interval for off-gassing, before the next dive. The whale show was still happening all around us, some of it up close and almost personal.We then headed up to Cherub’s cave (about 10-15 minutes) and dived in. We found and entered a cave, with Duncan in the lead as he (thought he) was filming, with myself just a little back to give room for Duncan to film (I had the camera light) and with Danny just a little back from me. As we got deeper in the cave we noticed that there was an opening at the far end, with just enough room for a diver to swim through, and with Duncan in the lead we swam right through and found ourselves in a ‘roomy grotto’. Danny swam up and over the side of the grotto and began to madly wave for us up to join him – he was excited about something. Upon joining him we could see what the fuss was all about. He had found a school of about half a dozen grey nurse sharks and we spent the rest of the dive with them. They did not appear to be overly concerned at our presence, displaying curiosity more than anything else.One of the sharks swam out of the hazy blue and casually headed directly for Duncan (he filmed the whole encounter – head on). The shark swam almost up to him, then casually turned away, giving Duncan a perfect photo opportunity (which he took advantage of) and this caused the shark to be heading towards me as it turned away from Duncan and it kept sweeping around which caused it to be now heading toward Danny. Of course, there were other sharks moving around as well.For those interested, we will be showing the movie to the club at the next meeting, which is, as previously stated, this coming Monday night. The seas were becoming calmer as the day progressed and our trip home was at full speed, uneventful, and we did not even have to slow down crossing the bar – it had settled down nicely. Did we have a great day – yep, and we retain the bragging rights.
Posted by Redland Sport Divers on Wednesday, 16 August 2017