Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

Waves crashing on the Great Barrier Reef.
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We gave ourselves about three weeks in Australia.  We knew this wasn't going to be a lot of time to see a lot of the country, so we had to be strategic in our travels here.  Having completed the pool and classroom portion of our open water scuba diving program in Edmonton, and having planned on completing the training at some point during our travels, we decided what better place than on the Great Barrier Reef.

We headed up to Cairns for a couple of days before boarding our three-day, live-aboard dive experience with a company called Pro Dive.  There was a three hour boat ride out to the Reef, on which I experienced my first-ever bout of motion sickness.  It was a very long three hours, with numerous trips to the railing to feed the fish (in talking with the skipper, Fonz, he reassured me that even the most hardened sailors still get seasick from time to time, typically when they are tired and their brain can't process the motion properly -- that's my story and I'm sticking to it!).

Our live-aboard dive boat, after surfacing.
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Pro Dive was a completely professional outfit with all sorts of roll calls and safety checks when you get in and out of the water, so hopefully our parents didn't fret too much about us getting left to the sharks in the Coral Sea. After four training dives we were certified Open Water divers (recreation dives down to 18 m), and I took another couple of training dives to complete my Adventure Open Water certification, which allows me to dive down to 30 m.

Speaking of sharks, we saw a great array of underwater creatures: white and black tipped reef sharks, sea turtles, rays, Nemos (anemone clown fish), and loads of colourful fish and coral that we don't even know the names for!  On my deep dive I also got to see moray eels and garden eels, a lion fish, cuttlefish, and a flounder.  The underwater photos here are only from the one dive where we rented the underwater digital camera, and unfortunately we didn't see any of the "big" stuff on that dive, but at least you can get a feel for what it was like.

With Dave and Karen from England, chillin' on the top deck.
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One of the things that we weren't expecting is that it's amazingly noisy underwater.  There's all kinds of snaps, bloomps, crackles, pops and other strange noises.

We also did a night dive, where you go underwater with high powered flashlights and glow sticks.  That was...atmospheric.  It really was quite neat, though, because some creatures come out at night that you don't normally see during the day.  A big crayfish poked his head out from under a coral outcropping, and our lights reflected off his beady little eyes.

Blub-blub...blub-blub....
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Speaking of beady little eyes on night dives, we were warned by our instructor, Eri, that if we could see two little lights in the distance that were reflecting our torches to point our flashlights away, then point them back.  If the little lights were bigger, then it was probably a shark coming towards you.  At that point, she suggested that we should all just point our torches at Eric, the biggest guy in our dive group of four, and let the shark have at him!  She says this with a completely straight face, and then goes on to say that while the shark is busy with Eric we'll all just surface, and later we'll let Fonz know where can go pick up his regulator and dive tank.  Then we'll all say a little prayer and thank Eric for his sacrifice.  By this time Eric is wide-eyed, and the rest of us are laughing hysterically.

Can you find Nemo?
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Diving on the Great Barrier Reef was a truly amazing experience.  This is definitely an activity we will continue to do.