Day 5 (AustraLearn Orientation) - Cairns, Queensland Australia

Today was my first time scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef! It was AMAZING! Or Ausome! Passions of Paradise took us out on a huge boat with two pontoons that sat in the water. There was a nice air-conditioned deck to with seats, tables, and a bar. That's where we had all of our meetings and debriefings. Outside on the deck there were plenty of places to sit and two canvas covers over two holes in the boat that made a nice bed in the sun. Even though the ship had a big mast, they used the engines to get us to and fro our locations. Our first stop was at this sand island where a bunch of sea birds used for their nests. If you went off of the sandy beach and further into the island on the green grass where the birds kept their nests you could be fined up to $30,000. We tied up at the island and the certified scuba divers took off in a smaller boat to dive. The people who were trying scuba diving for the first time went off of the back of the boat, while the snorkelers jumped off and swam toward the island where there was a reef in shallower areas. On our way out to our diving site we saw two sea turtles on the surface. Then we dove down. At first I was pretty nervous because it's been a year since I've been certified/last dove. And on top of that I had a sore throat so I was concerned that I may have had sinus pressure causing me severe pain if I tried to go deep. Thankfully I didn't have any problems. I took my time while diving, equalizing the pressure in my ears, and making it a smooth ride. I was also concerned about destroying marine life due to my inability to stay buoyant underwater. I tried to stay closer to the surface so that there would be little to no possibility of crashing to the bottom or hitting the reef. I did a good job of that, whereas some of the other divers failed. I got to see another sea turtle at the bottom of the reef, he was just chilling. He then decided to swim over and eat some food. Our dive master took some seaweed stuff and held it out to the turtle.He stopped, looked at it, pondered, and eat a chunk. He then moved on his merry way. It was an ausome sight! There was so much to see, reef wise and fish wise, that I just swam and took it all in. Surprisingly, I thought that the reef was going to be brighter in color than what it was. It was pretty dull and dark - maybe that's the result of all those wonderful fossil fuels and other pollutants we humans are disposing of. We dove for 40mins and went down15 meters (30 feet), the water temp was 21 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit). We had to wear stinger suits to protect us from the jellyfish could possibly sting us. There was a very small chance that we would've gotten stung because the stinger jellyfish stay toward land. But I did see two different types of jellyfish. One was pink and was a half doom shape, the other was transparent, looked more circular, and I could see these two little colorful internal pieces inside it. I opted out of the second scuba dive in order to snorkel and use my underwater digital camera to take pictures. Apparently the second dive was going to be more colorful, but I wanted to take pictures.After our 40min dive we got back in the small boat and drove to the island where I went snorkeling real quick with some friends. We saw a bunch of clown fish (Nemo!) but they were very small, and we also saw a blue spotted stingray - he was really cool. We then went back to the big boat and drove about 20 minutes to our next site. During that we had a real fancy lunch. The second site didn't have an island or land, so we just jumped off the back of the boat and snorkeled around the surrounding reef. It was fun taking pictures and shooting video of the fish and coral, and this place was a little bit more colorful. Underwater you could hear a constant crackling noise, almost like when eating pop rocks.It was the fish all eating pieces of the coral.

After an hour of snorkeling we went back to the boat and started back to Cairns. On our way the crew put up a giant front sail (I don't know the technical sailing terms) which was a big deal because they have only done it 6 times this season. Speaking of the crew, the men and women, skippers and first mates, who worked on Passions get an A+ in customer service! They were always joking around and making the trip so much fun. Two crew members went around the ship and memorized everyone's names. Then at the end of the trip they stood on the dock as we exited and shook our hands saying goodbye and thanking us. It was refreshing to finally get some real customer service.