Dive Site of the Month - Brett

Anth and Pete piloting the good submarine Marinara this morning, Anth's fingers dancing skillfully across the control panel, guiding her through the treacherous reefs of a typical beautiful Sunday morning.

In recent news, scientists have been analysing the effects of consuming different bivalves, trying to determine whether they are indeed aphrodisiacs. Among other findings, they have shown that chemicals elicited from the molluscs, including oysters, are similar to those that are elicited through sexual arousal - mainly sex related hormones. Maybe there is some truth in the old story yet...So there ya go.

Now, this time of the year, we are blessed - or not so blessed - to have some of the widest ranging tides. Great for beachcombers and rockpool rambles, not so great for the intrepid diver. For the diver who requires a reasonable amount of slack tide to dive a particular spot, this time of year has the effect of making the period of slack tide very hard to predict. So if you're wondering why at this time of year many dive operators tend to restrict their dive site options, it's because it is just so hard to predict that time window.

Pirates are defined as a person who engages in piracy (really useful that).

Piracy is robbery for private ends on the high seas or in the air above, committed by the Captain or crew outside the normal jurisdiction of any nation and without the authority of any Government.

The term was first used by the Romans around 140 BC, and there have been pirates about as long as there have been boats.

The typical loot ? Well, they robbed merchant ships so it was linen, food, anchors, ropes, medical supplier, spice, sugar, and quinine - only occasionally was it gold, silver or jewels.

And pirates had workcover - Lump sum compensation was paid, with different amounts for different parts - 100 pieces of 8 for an eye, up to 600 for a right arm. To get an idea of the value of a piece of 8 - if you stole something worth more than one piece of 8, the standard punishment was to be marooned or shot !

Buccaneers are a bit more of a specialist group. They only went after one type of loot - cows !!!!. They raided the cattle farms set up by the Spanish on the east coast of America and used the cows to make Boucan - a dried meat product. This was then sold back to the Spanish and anyone else that wanted it - using Jamaica as a home port.

You tend not to get many buccaneers these day, but pirates are still about. We were joined by Captain David Cranwell, a merchant master well experienced with the waters of both Australia and further afield, attested to the fact that pirates are still at large, though often using much more sophisticated equipment, i.e., machine guns and and rocket-propelled grenades.

Despite these new advances in technology, he can still recall one particular incident of relatively recent years, where a ship was boarded at night by a simple longboat - but he is quick to stress that such incidents have none of the glory and romance of the tales of old. These people more often than not are simple murderers.

At a later date, watch out for the privateers - different from pirates because of the authority of a Government.

"Dream your cares away"

"Hail the Chief"

"Brunswick St Girl"

Joe Camilleri

John McCutcheon

Overnight Jones

Brett tells us with good authority that much of the western half of Victoria's coastline pretty ordinary at present - at least between The Heads all the way through to Portland...