My Dive Trip to the Great Barrier Reef!
Trip Start
Nov 16, 2008
1
22
28
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Friday, April 24, 2009
i have just gotten back from an AMAZING 3 day/2 night dive trip with the ProDive Company out of Cairns. it was fantastic. the instructors were really nice, the food was great, the boat was spacious and clean. and the reef! WOW! tons and tons of fish! lots of turtles (we saw both green and hawksbill!), quite a few rays (both blue-spotted and marble), a moray eel, anenome fish, and even the very poisonous lionfish!
the dive sites were scattered across three different reefs all located on what is called the outer reef, or the area of the reef closest to the continental shelf. in total we did 11 dives, 2 of them night dives, which i was looking forward to the most. my buddy happened to be the girlfriend of one of the instructors so i went on a separate dive with them for the first night dive, and it was our mission to find sharks. and sharks we found! a lot of them were smaller reef sharks about 3-5 feet long, either the grey reef, black-tipped reef or white-tipped reef shark. but we did find a beautiful tan nurse shark, maybe 6ft long? that was the highlight of the dive! i would be swimming in complete darkness (almost like floating through space) and suddenly in the fringes of my flashlight beam i'd see a shark swim just below me or just next to me. crazy! the next night it was just jen, my dive buddy and i so we chose to swim a bit more slowly around the reef and we noticed right away that there were thousands of little eyes staring back at us... cleaner shrimps! heaps of them! we almost mistook a giant marble ray for a rock until we saw that it had a tail! it was peacefully resting on the seafloor, but because it had to have been at least 7 feet across we decided to leave it be!
my favorite dive site was a place on the Miln Reef called Coral Gardens and the name says it all. it was like i was swimming through Finding Nemo. all kinds of corals in every shape, size and color, tons and tons of fish--huge schools of them-- all feeding in the currents. everywhere you looked, bunches and bunches of fish. beside you, below you, above you, all darting or swimming off to somewhere. we even saw the famous cleaner wrasse nibbling off the algae on the larger cod and parrotfish. it was magnificent. i will never never forget that dive.
there were 32 other people on board doing the dive, some of them finishing their open water certification, others their advanced certification, but all were really nice and very friendly. we all got along well and it was a fabulous way to experience the reef.
i had been told by many divers that a liveaboard dive trip was the best way to see all that the Great Barrier Reef has to offer and i am so glad i took their advice. this trip has allowed me to become a better diver, a better marine biologist and just a better person. The GBR gave me an unforgettable experience and i sincerely hope it will not be my last.
