mEMYries: More Diving The Great Barrier Reef!

Hello Again! I'm back with some more diving posts. Most of these I wrote while diving and some I filled in blanks after the fact so the tenses are a little messed up but hopefully you'll get the point! Overall it was a really great dive trip. We did a ton of diving and it was exhausting. At the bottom I'll put all the pics. I took a lot so these are just some of my favorites. OK onto the blog...

Now we are on board another ship and diving a lot. Yesterday we did two quick dives to show the staff we know what we’re doing. I only had 9 dives at the time and Chris had 12 so we’re both very inexperienced divers. After 12 hours of steaming north we’re far up on the reef where only two boats come. Unfortunately the weather is really overcast so it’s not great visibility in the water and also isn’t great for photos but we’re enjoying it. Last night we did a dive as the sun was going down and I really enjoyed watching the fish right before dark. They all started to huddle in their coral a bit more and we saw a few sharks. This morning we saw lion fish and both dives were along walls of coral instead of small hills of it. Towards the end of the second dive there were very strong currents which were a little difficult to swim against but all-in-all good dives. Three more to go today!

Our latest dive and the third one of the day was awesome! It’s called Pixie Pinnacle and it’s a tower of coral that we swam around in circles. Chris and I actually only made it around once because we both enjoy going slow and really taking the time to look at stuff. The pinnacle was so full or life with a lot of nemos (clown fish), great school’s of fish, trigger fish, fish of every size and the coral was vast and had tons of spaces for fish to hide which is fun for us to look at. It’s a little bit of a bummer that the weather is overcast so we have lower light in the water but it was still a great dive. We were down almost 50 minutes and only made it around once but you could probably keep going around that thing so many times and always see new things.

The fourth and fifth dives of the day were in the same place. We dove during sunlight hours and then again at night. Chris and I went off on our own during the day dive, which maybe wasn’t the best thing. We got completely lost and had to flag the boat to come get us. We were totally fine but the water was way too rough to swim back in and we didn’t have enough air to go back under water. In diving you are supposed to do a 3-minute safety stop at 5 meters before coming up. Because we were diving so much on this trip and we were very far from any medical help the boat wanted us to do a 5-minute safety stop just as added protection. Chris and I were a bit lost when we started our safety stop but not that far from the boat. At 5-meters we couldn’t see a thing which is really disorienting and the current pushed us much further from the boat. It was a little freaky floating in the blue not being able to see a thing for 5-minutes so I was happy to come up and see the boat. They gave us safety sausages that are really easy to blow up in the water and wave to the boat and they came and got us really quickly.

The night dive in the same place (don’t worry we went with a guide) was way cooler than the first night dive I did on the other boat. We saw so much life! Tons giant Trevallys, red snappers, turtles, I saw a shrimp and crab, and a couple sharks. I took my camera but taking pictures at night isn’t the easiest thing.

Drift Dive

This was by far my favorite dive of the trip. They took us out on a tender far away from the boat and then we drifted back. At first we had to swim a bit against the current which wasn’t easy and it was hard getting used to just floating in the current but once I got the hang of it, it was great. I also kept tons of air in the tank from moving very little so the dive was an hour long! We drifted past a wall of coral that had a couple inlets that we swam through. The sun had come out at this point so the visibility was much better and also made the photography better. I rented a camera in Cairns (Canon G15) that I took with and one of the crew on the boat gave me great pointers and you can really see a difference I think in the later dives.

Cod Hole Dives

The last three dives of the day (on the last day) were in the same place. The first and third one were pretty similar except the current was much stronger by the third one. This location has very large potato cod (I would guess they’re 1.5-2 meters long) and they fed them right in front of our faces. It was pretty neat and then we swam around a bit more and saw a sizeable shark. At this point the current under the boat was pretty hard to swim around in so instead of surfacing we would take turns getting on the lander from under the water. It seemed as though it was my turn to get on the ladder and from out of nowhere someone else trampled over me onto the ladder. I was able to recover pretty well but it wasn’t fun. Just makes you appreciate diving with good divers and more importantly considerate divers. I definitely have a lot to learn but I try to be considerate of other divers and especially the life and coral in the water. Since Chris and I aren't the best at navigating we went with a guide and he took us in a cave which was by far the coolest thing on that dive. There were some schools of fishes in there to get away from the current and I really enjoyed that.

After the last dive of the day I personally was exhausted. We pulled up outside Lizard Island, our last stop, and they turned the flood lights on the back of the boat on. Chris and I were on the top deck and three sharks (I’m guessing 2.5-3 meters long) swam up to the back of the boat. Some of the staff went down and fed them. I was surprised by how small their eyes are.

The following morning we walked around Lizard Island that has nothing on it accept a very exclusive resort (the cheapest room is $1500/night) and a research station. We had a short walk around and then got on a 12-seater Cessna and flew back to Cairns! It was an exhausting but wonderful dive trip and I now have 20 dives on the Great Barrier Reef!