Saturday 16th August 2014

We booked out Blue Bay divers’ boat in order to dive the Sea Rogue wreck. The Sea Rogue was a prawn trawler that sunk on the 27th February 2008. There were three crew on board who were thrown into the sea. The deckhand swam for twelve hours to shore to get help, and coincidentally came to shore right in front of the owner of Blue Bay divers; Christina Gray who was walking her dog. Another crew member was found down in Ballina but unfortunately the skipper Charlie Picton was never found.

The wreck had only ever been dived once before by the team at Blue Bay but due to fierce currents they were unable to get any footage or photos of the wreck. The Picton family had asked if we could try to get some footage for them.

We headed down to Brunswick heads with the van full of tanks and stage bottles, very excited at the chance of potentially diving a wreck for only the second time in history and filming it for the very first. I was anticipating at least a two knot current but when we hit the site there was hardly any, it seemed to good to be true!

The CCR divers Ben B. and Ben S. headed in first with their scooters in order to ensure the anchor was well placed on the wreck. Once there was the all clear we geared up and headed down. I knew I wouldn’t have time to muck around with only a small bottom time so had already sorted out my manual camera settings and focus.

We headed down the line which was really fun because it was so deep I could just sink fast then inflate nearer the bottom, which felt like I was parachuting out of a plane.

Once I came to thirty six metres a blanket of narcosis consumed me and I was narked off my face! Narcosis is a feeling brought on when diving at deeper depths and can be prevented by reducing the amount of nitrogen in one’s gas mix that they are breathing for example by adding in other gas such as helium. Narcosis is likened to the feeling of being drunk, although it has many different symptoms. It took two minutes to descend to forty five metres.

I circumnavigated the wreck which remained well in tact and was littered with hundreds of brightly coloured fish and beautiful corals and sponges. The visibility was a clear twenty five metres. The wreck lay in the sand at about forty eight metres to fifty metres slightly tilted to it’s Starboard side.

As I glanced inside I could see walls of fish and also lots of ropes and cables hanging down. The trawling net seemed to be well caught up in itself and swayed gently in the slight surge. There were large parts of the steel boat that were exposed with little growth on it, which indicated that it did get a hammering in currents.

The narcosis was strong as I was on AIR whilst Nick my buddy was diving Trimix so he was clear headed. I felt like sound waves were traveling through my chest as I tried my best to quickly get around the wreck and video as much of it as possible.

Time went quickly and I signalled Nick to start our ascent. We switched to fifty percent Oxygen at twenty metres and started slowly ascending.

Everyone had an amazing dive and was really pumped afterwards. We couldn’t believe how perfect the dive conditions were. It was really cool to video the wreck for the first time but even better to give back to the Picton family something that I hope they will cherish. Ben S. also managed to retrieve a part of chain from the wreck sitting loose inside for the family as a keep sake.

After the dive the video went viral locally I was contacted by Channel 7 to contribute to a piece about Charlie Picton and the Sea Rogue. Click on the link to watch the television piece below:

https://au.prime7.yahoo.com/v1/news/a/-/national/24900611/finding-the-sea-rogue-video/

We will be working with Channel 7 to potentially do a second part series to this in the  future.