South Australian Wreck Diving @ The Norma (1893 - 1907)

www.divingadelaide.com.au www.onlinedivegear.com.au The wreck of the Norma is now well over 100 years old. It sank after it was hit by the barque Ardencraig, who misjudged the distance between the two ships due to extremely heavy rains. Right after the two collided and the Norma sank (within about 15 minutes), the Jessie Darling came to the rescue, which hit the at that point very shallow wreck of the Norma and also sank. The Jessie Darling was later re-floated and repaired. The incident with the Jessie Darling made the authorities decide to dynamite the site, to limit the risks of this massive wreck in the shipping lane. Because of this, the wreck site is very spread out. It took us well over 30 minutes to circumvent the whole site. There is an amazing amount of fish life on the wreck, mostly bullseyes, but also heaps of whiting and other schools of fish. You can clearly identify big parts of the ship. I've heard from different sources that there is a wobbegong shark living in the bow of the ship, but the three times that I have dived it I have never found it. As you can see in the video, there is a marker/plaque in the middle of the wreck site, that tells the story of the Norma. This dive site is usually quite murky, so we were very happy with the 10 metres visibility that we had when we dived it. There wasn't much current and the water temperature was about 22 degrees Celsius. Video shot at The Norma South Australia 09/03/2014 (C) Ron van der Marel / Brett Blackwell Divers: Ron van der Marel (Diving Adelaide Owner/Instructor) Denise Kuijlaars (Diving Adelaide Owner/Instructor) Brett Blackwell Boat: Flinders University Underwater Club (FUUC) This video was shot using a GoPro HERO2 and a GoPro HERO3, both in a dive housing