Dive Centre Manly divers save shark while exploring shipwreck Birchgrove Park
Divers used powerful torches to explore a shipwreck 50m below the surface when they came across a shark in desperate trouble.
Manly
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A video shows the amazing moment divers exploring a shipwreck 50m below the surface save a shark from certain death.
The team of five were on a technical dive off Bangalley Headland, on the northern beaches, when they spotted the Port Jackson tangled in old fishing nets caught on the wreck of the Birchgrove Park.
Stephen Ho, 32, a diving instructor with Dive Centre Manly, was leading the group and videoing the 70m dive on July 2 when he caught the dramatic incident on his camera.
He said at first they weren’t sure the shark, a docile species, was alive.
On closer inspection they found it was and so one of the divers used his knife to free it.
“It didn’t take long to cut him free, but he would not have escaped without help,” Mr Ho, of Collaroy, said.
He said it was a dramatic start to the day and it gave him a “warm glow” to know they had done a good deed.
However, he said he had seen others sharks caught in nets, some already dead.
He said they have rescued others, including a metre-long Port Jackson this week that was also caught in nets on the New Crane Barge shipwreck near the Birchgrove Park site, but did not capture that one on video.
“As a diver you get to see how diverse and interesting life is down there,” Mr Ho said.
“It gives you a different perspective. It’s very important to protect it.
“I don’t want to stop people fishing but we need to respect the fragile ecosystem.”
He said the northern beaches was an incredible spot for divers with Cabbage Tree Bay which is a protected marine park, reefs off North Head and an array of shipwrecks, providing dives from 10m to 75m.
“There’s not many places where you can go for a technical 50m dive before breakfast,” he said.
Most of the ships littering the northern beaches coastline were deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef, starting in the 1970s.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE TRAGIC STORY OF THE BIRCHGROVE PARK SHIPWRECK
However the Birchgrove Park was a 640-ton collier Birchgrove Park which left Newcastle on August 1, 1956, bound for Sydney carrying 500 tons of coal and is a legitimate shipwreck.
On board were 14 men, including two who lived on the northern beaches.
It got caught in a storm and out of the 14 crewmen, only four reached Sydney alive and of the two locals, only one made it home.
In another tragedy in October 1991 two experienced divers failed to return to the surface after visiting the hulk of the tug Himma scuttled off Dee Why.
The two men, Bradley Smith and Richard Yarrow, both accredited dive masters, had descended to the Himma with another pair of divers, but had become separated during the dive.
Other divers thought the two must have become disorientated after stirring up the fine silt in one of the tug’s compartments and were unable to find their way out before exhausting their air supply.
Since that tragedy there have been no further mishaps among the sunken hulks, with divers now all too aware of the dangers.