Inside a Cave EVERY Diver is a Novice

My name's Adam. I'm an Australian freediving champion, but because of COVID, I can't compete. So while we're waiting for the world to open up again, me and my wife Erin and our daughter Ellie are going on a freediving road trip around Australia. We're going to be living out of our tent and diving everywhere. So subscribe to follow the journey, and a huge thanks to our patrons for making this all possible. Good morning, freediving family. I'm here in Jervis Bay again. We love Jervis Bay. I've actually got an instructor course over the next week here. It's a few days before the course begins right now, and me and some of the instructor candidates are basically heading out on the Ellenautical to run a muck in the bay. This is actually the very first time I've taken my boat out, and I've been the most experienced person on the boat in terms of boating. So I hope I make my previous captain mentors proud. Mitch, Tom, you're here with me in spirit. I hope I don't crash. Anyway, let's go have fun. So we've come around to the eastern side of Bowen Island. We have a really strong westerly wind and it was really choppy getting out of here. We're just tucking in the back of the island for a bit of protection. I'm playing with a new camera today. I got sent the One R, the Insta360 One R. It's meant to be really cool. I saw Dan Behoven made a review video of it, which was really good. So I'm going to be using this as my top side camera as of three, two, one, now. Hey, sweet new camera. Oh, thank you. Where'd you get it? It's right here. So yeah, this is me now on the Insta360 One R. I hope the sound is good too because it is windy. So for Jervis Bay, this visibility is pretty bad. The water is usually really clean here. The landscape underneath was mostly really large boulders, which meant that there was always going to be gaps in between those boulders. So straight away, we found a really cool swim through, but it was way too tight to fit through. No one was going in there. I could hear the anchor dragging as we were diving, like a noise in the water. So I quickly swam back to the boat to sort it out, but it looks like it's stuck now. My new fetish for seaweed has only gotten worse. I actually think that seaweed is just as beautiful as coral. I'm putting it out there. And I found another swim through. So when we find a new swim through or a new cave that we haven't been in before, what we do is we swim down and we just sit at the entrance because we want to make sure A, that we'll be able to get through it and it's not too far. And then we want to be able to make sure that there's not too much surge or too many waves that are going to kind of get us trapped in there. So what I'm saying here is, let's go around to the other side and see what the exit looks like before we go inside. The exit was actually too tight for any of us to fit through. There were so many large boulders around. It didn't take us long to find a big open cave that we could comfortably swim through. And then I asked Bella if she would swim into the cave and sing a song from The Little Mermaid and she did, but I couldn't actually see anything on her face because she was backlit. So that fun shot did not work. We found another cave that was good to swim through and I went and positioned myself at the exit and everyone was meant to swim through in a big conga line, but they didn't see me going down and I sat there for ages waiting for them to come and nothing. But yeah, the second time it worked. It was really beautiful. Showing that the visibility, the visibility wasn't excellent, but we found so many cool like swim throughs and so many cool swim throughs that no one was game to swim through because they were just too tight, too long or too surgy. We're heading back into shore now and go get some food. We'll be back out here tomorrow morning, nice and early. Good morning, good morning. It's another fine day in Jervis Bay and we are heading out to dive some big sea caves and have a cheeky dive with some seals. It's a big day of diving in general, but I am particularly excited for the caves because I've never been in Jervis Bay when the weather's been good enough to hit the sea caves, like to hit them properly. Oh, the smell! Fishiness! Susan, how's the water? It's s***. I feel like every time I'm on a boat now and I'm the most experienced boat person, I'm just silently like s***ing in my wetsuit at every moment and just like keeping it together and not letting it be known. Right guys? You're doing so good. Right, yeah, yeah. This seal was by far one of the biggest in the water. Take a wild guess what could have done this to him. Dylan and Lara from Woebegone Freedive told us where we could find some cool caves around the seal colony. This big open cave is called the Lion's Den because as the waves rush in and out, it makes this roaring sound. I don't know the name of this cave, but we'll call it the seal cave because there are seals inside it. Alright, so we're out of the water now from the seals. Oh, the sun's in my eyes. The sun will be in your eyes, now it's in my eyes. Alright, we're out of the water from the seals and we're going to head over to some sea caves and do some diving in some caves. Let's go and do some caves. I'm going to lick the salt off this. Mmm. Delicious. So this is the first cave the guys are going to go and explore. I'm going to stay on the beach and film some fun things and then we'll all get to see it. Anyway, I don't know what this cave is called, I don't know if it has a name, but it looks big, open and fun. Well, I've got to say, this is pretty cruisy. I mean, I'm just sitting here doing nothing and you're still getting a vlog. I just pretend like I'm in there taking all this footage. Mitch has just come back and he said you need to go inside that cave, it's amazing. So I'm going to get in now. I found out later that this was called the Smuggler's Cave and there were two different entrances and you could swim right through it. None of us actually swam right through the cave though because the other entrance was a lot smaller and there were some waves moving in and out and look, when you don't know a cave, you just have to be super conservative so we didn't actually go through. A friend of mine who does a lot of underwater photography in caves put up a post recently saying that no matter who you are, no matter how good diver you are, inside a cave, every diver is a novice and he's absolutely right. He does some amazing underwater photography though so if you want to check him out, his Instagram is suatica. I don't actually know how to pronounce it but here it is. Just next to the Smuggler's Cave was another huge cave. I have no idea how far it actually went back and none of us went too deep into it to find out because once again, if you don't know a cave, you've got to be super conservative. There are just so many caves. Look at this. Divers, please alight from the vehicle. I repeat, all cave divers, please alight from the vehicle and get your arses in the cave. Look at that. That looks amazing. Back to the boat ramp. I was a little bit worried because I've never had the fuel tank so empty but you know, there's always reserve in the tank. We had a cheeky moment towards the end there where we all got in the boat and we all hopped on. There was a lot of weight at the back and like so much water just surged over the stern of the boat. That's right, the stern of the boat. And the boat like floated and I was like, oh my god, everyone get off the boat while I pump the bilge. I always feel like I'm just about to sink. I just want to show you what's going to happen when we open up these bungs. Let's see how much water was in the boat. The next day, the instructor course began. We started with a very, very nice dive session. Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody obviously smashed it. And then on the way home, the guys from Wobegon Freedive backed the boat into the caves that we swam through yesterday. I had to include this in the vlog because, oh my god, would I never have the balls to do anything like this. So this is the cave that we came and swam in yesterday. And I wasn't even game to get anywhere near it in my boat. Look at it, it's motored right into the bloody thing. That is a waterfall right there. I should have expected it but like, you don't expect it. Thanks so much for watching guys. Don't forget to subscribe by pressing this little circular thing down here. Also, check out this video. Or you might want to check out this video because you might like it too. Hahaha.