Diving the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns

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Hello monkeys,

I'll try and be quick as I'm pretty tired right now and have, of course, an early start tomorrow. I'm back in Cairns after having two days and one night away diving on the Great Barrier Reef, about two hours boat ride out from the city.

So yeah, two days diving, and do they like to pack it in! On the first day I got in three dives, starting around 11am and including a night dive, and on the second day got in another three dives, starting at 6am (grr) and finished before lunch. The dives themselves were all pretty good. I don't think it was as good as the Ningaloo Reef off Exmouth, but that was a pretty hard act to follow so doesn't reflect too badly on the Great Barrier Reef.

The coral wasn't totally pristine but had generally decent coverage, especially in the shallower bits, and there was a nice array of general fish and invertebrate life. One thing that intrigued me that I haven't seen elsewhere, and this may only be of interest to those with a marine biological bent, was the variety of extremely large (about 3-4 foot long) sea cucumbers (Holothurians). They are such odd animals! Google them.

Of perhaps more general interest were the several white tip reef sharks and hawksbill turtles that I saw throughout the dives. These did seem more at ease with humans than those in West Australia- I guess they see more of them. The sharks sat on the sandy bottom right out in the open, in contrast to those I have seen previously which were hidden inside crevices.

I was looking forward to the night dive, as these have reflected a small proportion of my diving so far. Whilst it was OK, it was nothing special and I didn't really see much I didn't see during the 'normal' dives, and a further downer was that my buddies (proper diving term) torch stopped working, which kind of limited things a bit after that- he was dependent on me to see, and I was having to keep an extra careful eye on him, so neither of us saw much after that. At least we were already on the way back to the boat when it happened.

And a bit frustrating on the last dive; we were on the way back along the reef towards the boat when I saw the most awesome looking cavern in the reef. I didn't go in- I was buddied with a very recently qualified diver who tended to get through his air quite rapidly, and it would have been irresponsible of me as the much more experienced diver to suddenly launch into a spontaneous cavern dive, but I really wanted to! Next holiday- a cave diving course. It must be done.

But enough of the diving. I got a pleasant surprise when I returned to the hostel. I hadn't bothered booking and paying for an upgrade to have my own room instead of a dorm (antisocial I know, but I like my own space), but I'm in a 4-bed dorm and nobody else is here! Rah, it's like a free upgrade!

But enough of this, bed soon.

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Photos

The reef
Yeah, yeah I know it would be bettter viewed from beneath the water, but no underwater camera, see?

Turtle
Again... I got much better views whilst diving