Going down under, down under

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November 29th 2006

Published: November 30th 2006

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SharkStalker

Giant potato cod

25/11/06 - 28/11/06 Diving the Great Barrier Reef

The dive trip that we booked was a 4-day trip on board a Catamaran M/V Nimrod out of Cooktown, to the Cod hole and Ribbon Reefs. This meant that the trip included low-level flights each way between Cairns and Cooktown. The plane flies at under 1000 ft/ 350 meters to enable us to make 2 dives in the morning and then fly the same day and was a real bonus to the dive trip looking down over the rain forest and the reefs and cays of the coast. The pilot announced a “Real treat” as we passed the ‘Devil’s Thumb’ a rock formation mountain peak high up above the rainforest. Supposedly it’s usually too windy or too cloudy to pass close to it and this was only the 3rd time in 5 years that the pilots have been able to pass so close!

We had 90 minutes to kill in Cooktown, which was a beautiful sleepy fishing harbour town. We wandered up the main street along the harbour’s edge and saw the cairn marked with a plaque commemorating the spot where Capt. James Cook moored the HMS Endeavour in 1770, and

Anenome fish

a statue of a miner, erected as a remembrance of the gold rush which swept through the town, bringing fortune seekers from all over the world.

We watched some old folk playing bowls at the famous Cooktown bowls club. They were happy to have some spectators and played amazingly well. We discussed whether bowls was a sport which we though we would get into in 30 years time - possibly!

After dinner on the boat, we started a very choppy 5-hour journey to our first dive location out on the Ribbon Reefs. Everyone retired early to their cabins to try and sleep away the rocking feeling.

The diving was fantastic. The Cod feeding at the Cod Hole was for a giant potato cod. It was quite hard to feed just the cod though, as a huge Napoleon Wrasse was also trying to get in on the action, as well as the ‘Evil Red Wrasse’ with their sharp pointy teeth.

Jen completed her advanced diver course with 5 modules of skills; a night dive, navigation dive, deep dive down to 30 meters, naturalist dive, identifying types of fish and coral and a peak performance buoyancy dive, performing

Circling reef shark

forward rolls underwater around a bar and trying to write on a slate whilst hovering perfectly still.

The 2 days offered 5 dives a day and then 2 dives on the last morning. You sleep very well after 5 dives in one day, starting the first at 7:00 am and then finishing with a night dive at 7:30 pm.

Highlights of the diving included:

My favourite dive site, Steve’s Bommie was a pinnacle that we dived twice on the last morning. Grey and white tip reef sharks circled the pinnacle around the 20-meter mark and the pinnacle was a beautiful coral garden, with all types of beautiful coral fish and shoals of snapper. We could have spent hours just hovering over the mass of colour and marine life but all too soon the diving was over.