Wednesday June 25th-Sunday June 29th (Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef)

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Wednesday June 25th:

We had to get up bright and early again. Today was the start of our five day learn to scuba course. The shuttle picked us up and took us to their retail shop in downtown Cairns. There we squared up all the remaining money, met our instructor Nick and the other six people that would be in our class. From tehre we were shuttled to a small private pool. There we spent the rest of the day. There were two days to be spent here. The people on day two of the course were already in the pool when we arrived. We started in a classroom where we received our text books, learned about the equipment and watched an hour of instructional video. After this was our swim test. Before you can get into the water with the equipment you have to swim 200 metres which isnt too hard other then the pool only being about 20 metres long. We had to swim 6 laps to fulfill this and then we had to tred water for 10 minutes. After all passing we got fitted for all our scuba equipment. We got it all on and switched with the day two class. We learned how to set up the tanks, tonnes of terminology, tonnes of hand signals as it is the only way to communicate underwater and finally how to properly ender the water. Once we were in the water we learned skills required while scuba diving. We started with how to find our regulators (mouthpieces) two different ways, how to clear water from our masks and the most important how to unblock your ears when descending. This ended up taking the rest of the day. At the end of the day Nick assigned us tonnes of homework. At night we had to read about 200 pages of light reading with pictures and charts and then answer fill in the blanks questions every chapter.

Thursday June 26th:

Today we had to be in the pool by 8 O'Clock. We redid all the tasks we learned yesterday and then also learned ways to push our partners on the surface if they were too tired to swim. The final task we had to learn was how to safely ascend to the surface if you or your diving buddy ran out of air. Once we had finished that we were free to do what we pleased until lunch time. Some people practiced tasks that they were not completly comfortable with and others just cruised around the pool working on their boyancy. After lunch we were back ot the class room. We went over units 3-5 on DVD and then took up all the fill in the blanks from last nights homework. After taking up this it was time for the exam. It consisted of 50 multiple choice questions. You had to get 40/50 to pass. I had enjoyed the course and doing the homework was actually fun. Because of this I ended up getting perfect on the exam. After this we were driven back the retail store where we went over what to bring on the liveaboard ship before being shuttled back to our hostels. At night Mike and I went to a presentation in town called "Reef Teach" It was run by a marine biologist masters student. It consisted of a powerpoint presentation and some display fish and coral which were passed around. The powerpoint showed us the 7 main fish types we would encounter on the reef and about the same with coral. We were also given a sheet of paper with photos of the coral and fish groups.

Friday June 27th:

Pickup today was at 7:20. We had to eat and checkout before this. We were picked up in the shuttle and dropped off at the retail store downtown. We sat around for about an hour before being shuttled to the day boat. The liveaboard ship is a mothership which stays out at the reef for a month at a time. Because of this we were on a little day ship which serviced it. The voyage from Cairns harbour out to the mothership took about two hours through three metre seas. Many people were sick on the trip. Once we arrived on the mothership we were safety briefed and then assigned rooms. The rooms were actually quite impressive with toilets and showers in each room, though the beds were quite cramped. Once we were setup it was time for our first dive! Nickgathered us and went over what we would be doing and then we got to setting up our equipment. The first dive we swam ton the surface from the dive ramp on the back of the boat to the anchor line at the front of the boat. Upon reaching the bottom of the line at about 12 metres we were tested ib mask clearing & removal, vest removal & replacement and tired diver tow. FIRST EVER SCUBA DIVE COMPLETED!!! After this we dried off filled in our dive logs and had about 2 hours off while the boat moved from Moore Reef to Milln Reef. Once we arrived here we were briefed and then suited up to dive again. We had completed most of the skills we were required for our lisence but we still had to complete two more guided dives. This dive we explored until the first person in our groups air got to the minimum. While we were exploring we were fortunate to see a green turtle which is much better to do while scuba diving then snorkeling because you can follow it around for longer. Once we had to resurface we simulated our controled ascents when a partner is out of air. It turns out that I breathe a lot underwater. I guess I just like my air. Because of this I used Nicks secondary regulator for the last ten minutes of the dive before the ascent. We got out, dried off and filled in our log books again before dinner. Dinners on boats was much better then I expected it to be. Tonights dinner was fish & chips with apple pie & ice cream for dessert. We had nothing to do the rest of the night so I updated my journal before having our morning dive briefing so that we could sleep in a bit tomorrow morning.

Saturday June 28th:

Today I was awoken at 5:45. So much for sleeping in! Our course is the first in the water each morning so we had about five minutes before we had to get ready and get into the water. We got in the water about 6:15. Because I was breathing so much air I was upgraded to a 10L tank as opposed to the standard 8L tank. On this dive we saw a shark, turtle and a small stingray. We had completed all our skills before this dive so this was basically a free dive. At the end of the dive the other dive buddy had to simulate the controlled ascent when partner is low on air. We got out of the water dried off and had breakfast. Right after breakfast we were right back in the water for the 8:00 clock dive. This was our final dive required for certification. Dan the resident "video guy" accompanied us on this dive capturing the events. We cruised around for about 15 minutes before finding an openwater area. There we were recorded with our personal messages we had written on slate. After this we removed our masks and regulators replacing them with aviators and a can of local beef pretending to drink at the bottom of the ocean. The final thing was being presented with our cards certifing us as scuba divers.

We had time off before the 11 O'Clock dive to allow our bodies to release the nitrogen which was stored in our blood. The nex dive would be back at the first reef we dove on (Moore Reef) except at a different dive spot called Manta Ray Bay. We attended our first official dive briefing which we were told to expect great things at this divesite. All the open water course members dove in a large group as we were still reluctant being out there on our own. We came up with a dive plan of our own and started down. It turns ot that where we thought the boat was on the dive map was very different to where we ended up descending. We ended up having to adapt our plan a little. We ended up finding where we thought we were going to descent to and followed our original plan. The fish were not around however. At the end of the dive one of the group members was getting low on air so we all decided to surface as a group. His partner and Mike continued to swim off however because they still had air. This was the start of mikes theatrics which began once the guides went away. We had already completed three dives today and had quite high levels of nitrogen in our blood. Because of this we took a long time off before our next dive. During this time we had lunch, dinner and also did a snorkel at 4:00. I also managed to fit in a snooze.

After dinner we had another dive briefing before our first ever night dive. It was about 7:45 when we finally got into the water. It is required that your first night dive be guided so six of us went down with a training divemaster. We followed her around the whole dive which was quite good because she knew her way around and took us to places on the reef which we never would have explored on our own. We saw a turtle, plenty of great coloured fish, a sleeping parrot fish and plenty of red cod. It was very dark underwater so we all had torches (flashlights in Australian). When you moved the light to the red cod they would dash off and you would only catch the tail. Because of this you would always mistake them for a shark as they have the same angled tail.

Sunday June 29th:

Today we were woken about 6 O'Clock after sleeing through the first two wakeup calls. Our first dive happened at 6:45, just after the sun had made it above the horizon. We dove at a site called Three sisters which we had already dove twice before. e dove off the back of the boat and then swam 20 metres off the back left part of the boat before descending. We descended down 20 metres. Right below the back of the boat was about a six food white tipped reef shark. We identified it and decided to follow it for as long as we could. Once we had lost site of it we resumed our dive plan cruising around two bombies (groups of coral) spotting a few barracudas. We got out of the water after twenty minutes. Breakfast was served and we had to check out before the 8:00 dive. We didn't end up diving until 8:45. It was at the same site as before so we explored the largest bombie which we had not managed to fully explore in the dives before. We saw some awesome coloured fish with odd shapes and spotted the same stingray twice. Right before we were going to ascend someone spotted a trumpetfish. They are very cool because of their very long thing bodies and their golden tail which is shaped like a trumpet.

The final dive of our trip took place at 11:00 after a short commute to Thetford Reef. We went out with our best diveplan yet and followe it perfectly. Unfortunately there was not much to see around. There was more sun then we had the whole time on the ship however so we ascended to about 5 metres below sea level and cruised around ontop of a few little bombies. The sun braught out the colours which you are unable to see at depth because of light deprevation. Not what I would have wanted for my final dive but seeing the coral in all its colours was a pretty cool thing to see after all. We got out of the water and had to take apart our whole scuba system cleaning it all out. We then cleaned our clothes we were diving in to get all the salt water out of them. The day boat was waiting already to take us back to shore so we grabbed our things an hopped on. The ride back to shore was much easier then the ride there as we were riding the waves as opposed to crashing into them.

The rest of the day was spent catching up on mail, facebook and starting the university regestration. We then went back to the hostel, checked in and had dinner while watching the newest Italian Job and a Dave Chapelle show filmed in San Fransisco. I ended up going to sleep at 10:30 completely drained after three days of diving.

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