Advertisement
Published: November 29th 2008
Edit Blog Post
elo elo.
So i have just recently returned from 3 days on the GBR(great barrier reef). My head is still slowly rocking as i have not gotten acustom to being on solid ground. The trip out there was somewhat rough...and being aware of my sickness, i downed some yummy motion sickness pills. LAra, knowing she was a toughie, and making fun of me for being a wimpy...took none. Sadly, Lara did the technicolor yawn over the side of the boat, feeding all the fishes her half-digested breakfast. She thought the main reason for her upchuck was karma...so she will no longer give me sass about my weenie stomach. And fortunatly no more vomit for the rest of the trip for either of us.
The boat we were on was very nice....it was just recently built in 2002, so everything was very new and modern. The crew and instructors were nice enough..more profesional than anything. We did 11 dives in total over 3 days... which is alot. We did a few technical dives using a compass and using kicks to estimate distance and such. We each did an underwater phototography dive...were we hired a a nice camera from the boat(pictures yet
undeveloped). We did a deep dive to 30m(normal depth max for normal divers is 18m). There is something called Nitrogen NArcosis once you get around 30m. It is a little like feeling drunk or euphoric....but it is completely harmless...because as soon as you move up it goes away. But the intructor had us answer a question while we were down there. he handed us a writing slate with a silly question....and we each had a line next to our name to write our answers. We all came up with some silly answer and wrote it where it belonged....lara, however, wrote her answer in this tiny portion of the slate, totally missing the blatant spot to write hers in. She didnt even realize it until the end. so she felt the effects. LightWeight! We also did 2 night dives. These are quite spooky. you are given a torch(thats australian for flashlight), and a glowstick attatched to everyones back. The moonlight only gives a small amount of light underwater....so basically you can only see where you shine your light. The first one was guided, so there wasnt much to worry about. The 2nd one they sent me and lara on our own
way. This was a great dive....as he gave us some compass headings to find bryan...the biggest laggerhead sea-turtle in the GBR. Fortunatly, we did a good job night-navigating and found him sleeping in a little cave. It was ridiculous. This turtle was about as big as the hood of a car. I am not joking.....by far the biggest turtlte i have ever seen. so we lowered ourselves behind him and watched him sleep. very cute. All other dives were just for fun...and we saw a endless amazing things. Reef sharks, stingrays, puffer-fish, parot fish, angel fish, bat fish, barracuda, unicornfish, clownfish, lots of sea turtles, mooray eels, shrimp, worms, urchins and massive mountains of beautiful coral, whips, fans etc. One of my favorite things were the schools of buffalo parot fish. They told us if we see what looks like a moving coral reef, move closer and you will see this herd. They were right. We came aross a dark section and realized that this herd of buffalo parrot fish were blocking all the sun, There must of been about 100 of them and they are huge. Truely amazing. The GBR in general is a totally different world. Each reef
and coral has its own unique feel to it, like a neighborhood and houses with different rooms and owners....all of which we were the guests. OVerall all i am very stoked about diving and would love to continue.
okdoke. Thats all for me. happy day!
-brad
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0436s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb