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Published: August 6th 2007
Cod
So...uh...what's up?One could probably contest the exactness of 0.0054 leagues...but it's really a hard distance to nail down. At one point, a league was defined as the distance that a person, or a horse, can walk in 1 hour of time (usually about 3.5 miles or 5.5 kilometers). It has also been expressed as 3 nautical miles (or about 5.556km). But who's really going to do the conversion anyway? Actually, I can think of a few that will surely do this conversion...you know who you are...and you mostly work for a telecom company based out of Schaumburg.
Anyway...I'm currently reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. It's his attempt to summarize scientific knowledge about...well...everything. The universe, our solar system, the earth, geology, weather, physics, etc. At first I thought it a bit odd that while traveling I'm reading the one non-travel book by an author who has made his mark in the literary world with his travel writing. But it now seems somewhat appropriate as I've just completed a chapter in which he has described the effects of pressures on the human body and how we're only capable of living in a tiny tiny range of altitudes (above
Yeah, I Found Nemo
These clownfish guys were cool & I could have watched them dart around in the anemone all day long. The anemone protects them from certain dangers, and they keep certain fish away from the anemone. and below sea level) on the planet. It seems appropriate because I just spent 5 days subjecting myself
to the underwater pressures of the Coral Sea as I explored the Great Barrier Reef.
Oh, by the way - as indicated in my previous entry, I'm in Australia now.
Before getting to the Reef story - my arrival in Cairns was followed with exactly what I was looking for...3 days of sitting on my butt doing nothing but reading, sleeping, watching TV, catching up on the blog (hence the flurry of 3 entries in 4 days or so), and aimlessly wandering around town. The only thing missing was the sun. Cairns is kinda like the Florida of Australia and typically has very pleasant winters with little rain. Leave it to me to come to a country which is in a 10 year drought and during a (typically) dry month...but barely see the sun for the first 9 days. In any case, I veged out and - just in time for my boat trip - I got back to the point where I felt like being social and 'diving into' the next adventure.
This next adventure was to be
Lion Fish
This dude was just asking to have his picture taken b/c he had all his fins flared out. The irony is that he does it to scare things away...but it just draws in all the divers with their cameras. one of my more highly anticipated parts of this journey of mine...a live-aboard SCUBA dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. This was basically set up as the anchor of my Australia experience and something I've thought about for quite a while. So bring on the Reef!
In this entry, I'll do my best to take you with me aboard the Taka (the dive ship) and out to the reef for the full live aboard dive experience. However, I've struggled with a few aspects of how to best do this. My intention with the blog is to convey the trip as it is and to not just report all the cool stuff. So far...it's basically just all been cool...and anything that wasn't ideal ended up being a good part of the adventure as well...so it's been easy. The dive trip brought both some great experiences and some less than pleasant experiences. Here's to hoping that I can appropriately convey both.
The ship of choice was the Taka - a 30m dive ship capable of taking 30 divers per trip. The trip plan of choice was the Cod Hole & Osprey Reef trip consisting of 5 days and 4
nights out on the reef with a total of 14 dives...which would triple my lifetime # of dives.
A shuttle cruised around town Friday afternoon collecting each of us eager divers-to-be and brought us to the harbor. We all boarded and quickly began the task of getting situated with the appropriate dive gear:
- BCD/computer/etc
- Fins
- Mask/snorkel
- Wet suit
- Weights
I think that's it...in any case...we departed from the pier and headed out towards the reef and the promise of the brightly colored creatures and coral that we were to encounter there.
The ship was quite nice and well laid out for handling all the divers, crew, and gear. There was a main room where we did our dive briefs, ate, and generally hung out. Behind the main room was the dive deck where we kept our dive gear and would begin/end our dives. Above this was the mid-deck...a place where I (unfortunately) spent too much time during my Taka experience. I shared a room with a crazy Aussie dude from Melbourne named Mischa. As would be expected, it was fairly small, but certainly comfortable enough...and due to all the activity, I really didn't
spend much time there anyway.
But enough of the boring stuff. The stage is set...let's get to the water/fish/reef/etc, eh? (a side note...the Kiwis say "eh" like Canadians do. Unfortunately I kinda picked up this bad habit. I'm hoping it wears off soon...eh?). As part of the trip I also decided to sign up for the Advanced Dive Course. This basically means that I had to learn and display 5 additional dive skills (night, deep, buoyancy, navigation, and underwater naturalist). Technically I did the advanced course when I got certified in Florida years ago, but never got the documentation...oh well. Was good to get refreshed on all of it anyway.
After cruising all night, we got to our first dive site - the Cod Hole. We did two dives here in the morning - one to generally cruise around and see what we could see...and the second was the Cod Feed session. My first dive was spent mostly getting used to diving again. Great to be back underwater! The Cod Hole is inhabited by some really large fish called Potato(e) Cod. (I added the "e" for all the Dan Quayle fans out there). You'll see these in my
Tree Worm Thingies
These things were hilarious...they looked like tiny little Christmas trees and if I waved my hand near them, they'd withdraw into the coral & slowly come out again. photos. During the feed session, we all sat on the sea floor in a circle and watched as the cod came out to play. The dive master came around and floated some food in front of each of us while the giant cod cruised around gobbling it all up. Pretty cool stuff to watch these things swimming around and in between us.
After the cod feed we headed off to another location - Challenger Bay - for our afternoon and night dives. Night dives are cool. I did one back in Florida in 2002 and recall being a bit freaked out by the fact that one really can't see much other than the 10m or so illuminated by one's "torch" (known to us silly Americans as a "flashlight"). It's a bit unsettling, but cool after getting used to it again. Many of the daytime fish are hiding and sleeping the night away, but other things come out - shrimp, crabs, different (less colorful) fish, etc. Good stuff.
Next comes the "fun" part. The dive sites for day 2 were at Osprey Reef - which is a considerable distance out to sea from the main part of the reef.
Basically the significance of this is that we had to cruise all night in waters that weren't protected by the reef...and due to the crummy weather we were having, the seas were rough.
For those who just ate, are prone to queasiness, or just want the pleasant version of the story - the crossing went fine and the dives the next day were awesome. Now please skip the next few paragraphs to rejoin the story when you see "SHARKS!"
For the rest of you - above I alluded to not really knowing how to best tell the story without missing details yet not giving more information than necessary. Here's the part I was talking about. Unfortunately, dinner after the first day of diving was really good. I ate plenty. Having been warned of a potential for rough seas that night, I took some sea-sickness pills and headed to bed after our exhausting day. I got to bed, the captain started our journey, and the battle was on. I'm still amazed that I never actually got launched out of my bunk. I endured the pitching from side to side for about 30 minutes before I frantically had to jump
from the bunk, fling open the door, and run to the railing of the mid-deck and did a little pitching of my own (so much for those pills I took). Unpleasant, I know. But not nearly as unpleasant as if I had spent the entire remainder of the night in the exact same spot clutching to the railing and repeating this experience every 30 minutes or so. That would have been horrible. And what would have made it worse would be if it was literally the longest night of the year. I would imagine that it would be horrible to be sitting there without any knowledge of when the salvation of the morning light and sight of the reef would come. I would imagine that running out of water in my water bottle somewhere in the middle of this horrible night would suck as well. I would imagine that I'd be surprised to learn that one can simultaneously give a two-handed death-grip to a railing, brace oneself with one's feet, and slip in and out of the lightest levels of sleep - yet still have multiple dreams of a glorious sunrise bringing a welcome end to the nightmare - only
to be quickly aroused by the next violent pitch of the boat and finding that I was still in the dark lonely hell of the night. This all could have been even less fun if it were cold, windy, rainy, and sea water kept splashing around me. If these things were to have happened, I bet I'd claim it was literally the longest and worst night of my life. And I bet it would have been one of those experiences that reminds a person that regardless of how old we are, there are times that we just want our mom to be there.
As you can tell by the level of detail that I've imagined above, I clearly could not have actually had that experience. Wow...that's a relief...it almost feels real. As it turns out, the evil night sky eventually began to brighten and the Taka found calmer waters as we neared the reef. The long sleepless night was over.
I skipped breakfast and mustered up some strength to do the first morning dive - a spot called North Horn. After all, being underwater is the best place to be when one feels seasick. The dive went without
incident. After a quick break back on the boat, we started to suit up for the next dive - the most highly anticipated dive of the trip. This was to be a shark feeding session at North Horn. Cool. I sensed that it might be wise to do a short dive and to resurface after the feed rather than cruise around some more - I didn't want to subject myself to too much of the underwater stress (pressure of the water, breathing strange air, mask squishing my face, etc.). So I switched dive buddies and paired up with another guy who didn't want to stay down the whole time. As I got my gear on, the rocking of the boat triggered the sickness again. It was a race to get into the water before the queasiness got to be too much. I cut in line and giant-strided myself into the apparent safety of the ocean. Now the race was on to deflate my BCD and descend away from the chop of the surface to the calm of the water below.
This next part really is too much information. So just go ahead and skip this paragraph. I made it
Clam
This was probably a little over a foot across and would close up like this if I got too close...which I apparently did while taking this shot. Cool colors inside. down a few meters and started to swim over to my buddy so we could descend to the feed location. Unfortunately, my body decided that the fun wasn't over and I ended up creating a little fish-feed area of my own...through my regulator. Awesome. My buddy gave me the hand signal asking if I was OK or not. I shrugged and gave the OK sign and indicated we should get on with the dive. See - I told you to skip it. Now that that's out of the way, we can continue with the story. It's all ok from here on out.
SHARKS!
Ok, welcome back to all the readers who wisely skipped ahead as instructed. The shark feed began with all of us sitting in a semi-circle around a coral head where the dive master had anchored a garbage bin containing several large tuna heads on a chain with a buoy attached. As was the case with the cod...the sharks knew what was coming. We sat there watching a dozen or so sharks (oceanic whitetips, whitetip reef sharks, and gray reef sharks) circle around the bin eagerly anticipating breakfast. When the dive master was clear, she pulled
Strong Current
Holding onto the anchor line to avoid being carried away by the current. a line that released the lid and the tuna heads popped up. Let the frenzy begin!
The next 4 minutes consisted of thrashing, crunching, the sound of shark teeth on metal chain, wriggling, tugging, and underwater chaos like I've never seen before in person. It was really really cool. The first several tuna heads were devoured quite rapidly, but they had a hard time getting the last one off the chain. Once all done, they dispersed a bit, the smaller fish came in to clean up the scraps, and I made my way up to the surface. I skipped the two afternoon dives and did my best to catch up on some sleep and regain some level of feeling like a normal human being.
I see that the entry is getting long...so I'll wrap it up. Basically, the rest of the trip consisted of me fighting a mild level of sea sickness and generally wanting to be either back on land or completely underwater looking at colorful distractions from my current physical state. We did another night dive during which I saw a really big sleeping turtle - very cool. Otherwise there were lots of colors, worms, schools
of fish swimming around me, anemones, corals, etc. good stuff. Hopefully the photos should give a pretty decent idea of what was out there. Generally the reef was in good shape, but there were obvious places where it was banged up from other divers. Bummer.
A quick note on the photos. Some are mine, and some were taken by the on-board photographer. I rented an underwater digital camera and was excited to see what I could do. As it turns out...underwater photography is really hard. The lighting, color (white) balance, settings, particles in the water, external strobe, diffuser, and all the technical things are hard enough on their own...but even harder when combined with the diving considerations of current, buoyancy, not touching/breaking coral, leaky masks, keeping track of my buddy, etc. The white balance settings of the camera were really finicky and I never was quite happy with the results. A few turned out well...and a lot turned out crappy. Oh well...a fun experience nonetheless.
So...I guess that's about it for my diving story. I hope you enjoyed and aren't too mad at me for the details of the 'imaginary' story of the longest night ever...and the subsequent
Cod
These were quite large...over a meter long. underwater experience. All in all, the trip contained some brilliant highlights and some definite lowlights...and I'm glad to be back on solid ground.
Cheers,
Marc
As I write this - 2 days after being back on solid ground - the room is still swaying and I'm not quite back to 'normal'. I'm hoping this diving/boating hangover doesn't last much longer and I can regain a more stable sense of the world around me.
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Cameron
non-member comment
Robert's Jealous!
Good stuff, Marc, except for the sea sickness - sorry to hear about that. The GBR is one of those places Robert has dreamed of diving on. Again, guess we'll all have to live vicariously through you and your adventures! The pics you included on the blog are great. Thanks again for sharing your experience with us desk jockeys.