We arrived back from the Pacific Ocean yesterday after 5 days of great diving and wonderful company, aboard our boat the Taka. The boat was brand new and purpose built for diving expeditions, which makes life to much easier and the whole crew, from the chef to dive leader, were qualified dive masters or instructors - very reassuring! The advantage of a 'liveaboard' boat is that you don't waste time returning to land each day so you can get more dives in each day and the boat moves between locations at night meaning no wasted time travelling. The boat took no more than 30 people, which made the group nice and cosy and we all soon made friends over the excellent meals prepared by our on board chef. The first night on board was spent just getting to know each other and the routine for diving over the next few days, whilst the ship steamed over night to our first reef at the Cod Hole, a few hundred miles north of Cairns. Each day was a roll-call at 6.45am and we were usually in the water for our first dive of the day by 8.30am. This was usually followed by three further dives a day. In total we did 13 dives during the trip, which is a lot of diving by anyones standards. Each day we would be underwater for about three and a half hours. We were pretty whacked out at the end of each day as the combination of the stored nitrogen in our blood from the compressed air and the atmospheric pressures exerted whilst diving took their toll on everyone. At depth you would be subjected to 4 atmospheres (4G) of pressure, not dissimilar to that experienced by a fighter pilot. The first dive was a great experience to feed some enormous Potato Cod that live on the reef. Once we had all descended to the ocean floor we knelt in a big circle whilst the dive leader attracted the Cod and began to feed them small fish from a basket. This has to be done a little carefully as they have 10 rows of inward facing teeth. Even with two pairs of gloves on, you can get a good nip from them. Unfortunatley for these big 90kg fish, about the same weight as a grown man, they are quite gentle and slow. There are plenty of other more aggressive fish such as the equally big Napolean fish and Red Bass Snapper in the area that are also keen on being fed and it became a constant battle to keep the others away from the basket. At times we were literally swatting away the other large fish in order to get to the Potato Cod. There are some great photos of us with these big fish. Later that afternoon we had our first experience with sharks. Whilst diving alongside a wall of coral that descended down in a sheer face into the murky depths for over 3000ft, we spotted a few white tip reef sharks basking on the sands of the ledge below us. The largest was around 6 feet long and whilst not dangerous to people we still carefully kept a respectful distance, just in case. The real shocker came when Chris spotted a LARGE Grey Whale Shark having a snooze in a cave under the wall. From head to tail it was 10-11 feet long and it's head was around 3 feet wide. Chris cautiously swam into the very entrance of the cave to bravely take a photo of the sleeping beast with the underwater camera that we had hired for the day. But once Chris was within a couple of feet of it and the water was disturbed by the change, the sleeping beast started to move and raised its head for a piercing look at Chris. You have never seen Chris move so quickly - with a shark right behind him, turbo propelled fins would not have got him to move faster out of the cave! We also did our first night dive. Positioned about a hundred miles out to sea, the thought of jumping into the Pacific Ocean in the dark night sea did seem a little scary. Armed with a torch and glow sticks, we were able to patrol the bottom of the ocean like spacemen exploring a new planet. It was an exhilarating experience though to see all the marine life at night whilst many are feeding. Our torches swept the nooks and cranies keeping a look out for unexpectd foe. In the dark, they have the advantage over you! In some sites the current was very strong so we were able to do drift dives. When the undersea current is so strong, it's impossible to swim against it so the idea of a drift dive is to just go in one direction and let the current take you. However it means you can't get back to the boat yourself and can end up quite a way out from your starting point. You have to signal the main boat to send out a inflatable boat to bring you back. Rather than try to clamber back on with all your gear, the inflatable boat would throw you a line and drag you back just under the surface. It was really fun doing this, a bit like when you're learning to waterski and don't manage to get up on the skis and end up being dragged behing the boat. In this case though we could use our air to breathe. We saw some fantastic things throughout the dives including turtles, octopus, bannerfish, butteryfly fish, anenomes, triggerfish, snappers, jacks, unicornfish, large wrasse and wonderful multicoloured coral. We have to say, though, that the sharks had to be the highlight of the trip. We would certainly do this type of trip again, although it is very tiring. The next few days will be spent recuperating around the pool in readiness for the next leg of our journey to Alice Springs and Ayres Rock, at the weekend.