Jockey Joe Bowditch reveals his passion for diving and underwater exploration for seafood

News.com.au

01-07-2025

Jockey Joe Bowditch is equally at home scouring the ocean bed for crustacean delights as he is at top speed aboard a 500kg thoroughbred.
Bowditch has ridden more than 1450 winners in a career that has taken him to ride in every state in Australia as well as in Dubai and Hong Kong.
Bowditch has forged a place in the Victorian riding ranks in the last few years, consistently punching home winners for a variety of stables.
While Victoria has provided Bowditch with a good living on the state's bays and inlets have been a bonanza for the jockey's burgeoning obsession with diving.
Bowditch takes every chance he gets to head out in search of the high quality Victorian seafood.
'I get out as often as I can, weather permitting and the races permitting as well,' Bowditch said.
'If the weather is good and I've got the day out, I'm happy to head out.
'A lot of people get water up their nose and start panicking.
'I bought a boat when I was up at the Gold Coast and I didn't even know how to put the boat in the water.
'I got into it that way and a good mate of mine in Adelaide, a horse trainer named Darryl Carrison, he's an abalone diver and he took me out and showed me how to do it.
'I've had a passion for it ever since.'
Bowditch doesn't seek abalone as he 'doesn't know how to cook it properly and it ends up like eating a gumboot' but delicacies such as mussels, crayfish and scallops often land in his bag.
The 48-year-old doesn't use the whole scuba set-up but dives to the ocean bed using an air hose attached to his boat in which he dives with his cousin's husband, who has become one of his best mates.
Melbourne's winter is still no match for Bowditch's desire to dive in the ocean while a weight belt helps the lightweight rider get to the bottom.
'I run off a hook-up, a dive hose, so when we go for crays, we got out for crays, we're in anything between 20 or 30m of water,' Bowditch said.
'If we're chasing scallops, we're in four to six metres of water.
'I've got like a 7mm thick wetsuit so even now in the winter time, if the water was flat and the sun was out, I could still go out and not get cold in that wetsuit.
'My weight belt weighs as much as I do. When I'm out of the water, I'm flat out picking it up.
'Once I get it on and get in the water, I'm able to get down to the bottom.
'It would probably be 20 or 25kg of weight in the weight belt to help me get down to the bottom.'
While Bowditch is a vastly experienced diver, he said he still had to be extremely careful to stay safe while indulging in his passion.
'It's dangerous if you don't know what you're doing,' Bowditch said.
'If you come up too quick, you can get the bends pretty easily.
'You can even get the bends in four metres of water because you've still got the nitrogen running through your blood.
'You can either get the bends or getting an air bubble in the brain, which can kill you.'
But the development of culinary skills has been a pleasurable by-product of Bowditch's diving experiences.
'I've become a good cook on the barbie,' Bowditch said.
'Just before I went on holidays, I went out and got probably a dozen squid and feed of whiting and flathead.
'I catch plenty of scallops that I've learned about 15 different ways of cooking them.
'I just love it.'