Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

After an amazing time living and working in Perth it is time to move on once again. Perth was the last place i will work in Australia, from now on it's just non stop travel for around 8 months! I can't wait!

I'm really glad that i get to start these travels with Cheryl who also wants to do some of the East Coast before she heads home. Our first stop was Cairns, where we booked on to a 3 day 2 night live-aboard dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Seeing the Great Barrier Reef has been something i've wanted to do for as long as i can remember. It was one of the main reasons i learnt to dive, so that i could dive here. I was so, so excited to get to live my dream at last. Cheryl was not a certified diver so she booked onto a 2 day theory course which tied into the live-aboard trip and she completed her certification practical element whilst on the boat.

We got picked up at 6.30am and taken to the dive shop to get our kit and check in, then we were taken over to the boat. It was actually smaller than i was expecting but there was a lot of space inside, it was kind of a Tardis boat! Cheryl and I got a little cabin with bunk beds in which was cute. The way out was pretty horrendous though! It was very choppy and having been on many boats in my life i was convinced i don't get sea sick, even on the awful ferry in Fiji i was fine. However i had to sit outside on the back of the boat on the 3 hour journey out to the first dive spot as it was so rocky and i was feeling pretty horrendous. A lot of people were being sick over the sides, so at least i wasn't that bad! The benefit of living on the boat is that you have the time to get to the outer most reefs which are the most vibrant and undamaged. Unfortunately due to climate change, tourism and mining in Australia, where they dump sediment into the ocean, the reef is quite quickly dying. The outer reefs are mostly undamaged though and it is out there that you see the biggest and coolest marine life. The boat was fully equipped with a kitchen in which the chef made amazing hearty meals to keep us going on the long days! She also baked 2 cakes a day from scratch! Catering for 23 people in such a tiny kitchen, on a boat, was very impressive and the food was really tasty. It also had plenty of bathrooms which had showers in as well, you could sit on the toilet and shower which was funny but the showers were actually really good, with good pressure and nice and hot.

The first day was very long as we were picked up at 6.30 and did 4 dives that day! As a certified diver the dives were not guided, so you got a buddy who you dive with but you have to navigate yourself around the reef and back to the boat using compass references, something i had never done before! I buddied with an American guy called Dave who was a newly certified diver. Neither of us had navigated under water before so we got pretty lost! We ended up surfacing a long way from the boat and he had used almost all his air (I had used less than half my tank!) so we had to swim on the surface a long way back to the boat which was exhausting. I wasn't feeling great about the trip after the first dive as it went pretty badly! Luckily one of the instructors gave us a lesson in compass navigation and the second and third dives of the day went without incident and we found our way back to the boat a lot more easily! The reefs were incredible, really vibrant colours and teaming with marine life! On the 3rd dive we saw a turtle which was amazing! He was eating algae off of some coral and when we swam over he came right up to us and looked straight into my camera! I got some amazing photos of him. Turtles are my favourite animal and i was so happy to see one so close up. We also saw a few white tip reef sharks in the sand and some huge groupers and hump head parrot fish which were really interesting to watch.

The fourth dive of the day was a night dive. This meant we waited until after sunset and at 1930 we kitted up and went diving in the pitch black! Luckily as almost no one had done a night dive before the certified divers were split into two groups and went guided. I was very relieved about that! We had glow sticks attached to the back of our air tanks and we were each given a torch. What makes night diving so interesting is that most of the reef fish are asleep and hide into the corals but this allows you to see what you don't see during the day which is the crustations and things like crabs and lobsters. On the other hand some marine life stay awake at night and are attracted to the light given off by the boat and our torches. These are things like large grouper fish, red wrass and grey reef sharks. When we entered the water directly below us was a circling grey reef shark, these are bigger than the white tips you see during the day but still harmless. As we descended down i was shocked by how close the groupers got to us, they are attracted to the light so you would turn your head and a huge fish would be centimetres from your face just looking at you! It was a little disconcerting not being able to see these huge fish and sharks until you shined your torch in their direction but i soon forgot about them when we started looking around the reef. Our instructor told us in the briefing for the dive about the red grouper fish who use your lights to hunt. If you shine your light on one of the few small reef fish that are awake and swimming around the red groupers will see them and chase and hunt them, eventually eating them! The instructor said you can kind of play god by helping the groupers hunt and eat the fish or you can tease them by shining your torch on the fish so they chase it but then turning it off so it gets away. It was so interesting and pretty fun interacting with the fish in this way, but i did feel a bit bad when i got a fish eaten so ii only let them eat one! We saw a huge lobster hiding in the coral, it's eyes glowed bright red in the light from the torches and it looked a bit evil, so i didn't get too close. We also saw a turtle swim above us so we could see its silhouette glide over us outlined by the moonlight coming through from the surface, a truly beautiful sight.

After the night dive we had freshly baked cake and tea and coffee, i was a bit cold but the water temperature doesn't cool at night so it wasn't as cold as i thought it was going to be. We then had a few drinks and some get to know you games with everyone on board which was really fun. We were all so exhausted though that we went to bed at around 10pm as we had to be up at 0530!

The next day we had another 4 dives and were in the water by 630am. The second dive of the day i got to buddy up with Cheryl as she had completed her diving course so that was really nice, we got some great photos of each other and we saw another turtle really close. By this point i was getting really good at the navigating side of things so i wasn't worrying so much about getting lost at sea! Our 3rd dive of the day was at a reef called Flynn Reef, it was definitely the prettiest reef we had been to, it was quite shallow but so full of life with loads of sting rays and sharks and we even saw a barracuda which was amazing. They are so fast, i've never seen anything move so fast underwater, it hunted a fish and when it moved to get it it made a big whoosh sound under water because of the speed it took off at. I had never seen a barracuda before so i was really happy we saw him, i wouldn't want to get too close to one though, their teeth are enormous!

The 4th dive of the second day was another night dive. The newly certified divers went guided but as the certified divers had done a guided night dive the night before we were allowed to do this one unguided. That meant just me and Dave going off in the pitch black underwater!! I was pretty nervous about getting lost but we were on a reef that we had previously dived that day so that we would recognise it and know our way round. I shouldn't have been nervous as it was even better than the first! As we were just in pairs we made a lot less noise and it meant we saw so much more! We saw a huge school of hump head parrot fish, each fish is probably half the size of me and they have enormous beak like teeth for biting rocks and coral. They are almost blind, especially at night and they kept bumping into us! We also saw a resident turtle named Brian asleep in his cave. Turtles cannot breathe underwater however at night they can slow their metabolism down so that their hearts beat just once a minute. This allows them to stay submerged for up to 12 hours! Brian is a beak nosed green turtle who is 2metres long and 1.5 metres long. Yes that's bigger than me! I've never seen such an enormous turtle, it was insane. He was tucked right into his cave and moved around a bit when we shone our torches on him but didn't seem to care too much. It was absolutely amazing seeing a sleeping turtle and i was so happy we found him! We managed to find our way back to the boat really easily as you can see it from really far away due to the light it gives off. When we were under the boat doing our decompression stop we turned off our torches as we were told the sharks circling the boat will come closer if you turn your torches off. Sure enough when we then turned our torches on there were 3 sharks just a few metres away! I felt pretty proud that we had navigated properly and didn't get lost, it was a really great dive.

On the final day on the boat we did another 3 dives. I got to do these with Cheryl again and we had loads of fun exploring the reefs and finding some really rare marine life. On the last dive we were looking at a group of clown fish when a loggerhead turtle just appeared from behind the coral. We followed it up to the surface and then it dived down again, it wasn't phased by us and let us swim along next to him and kneel on the bottom while he ate. Throughout that dive we saw him another 3 times, he was so friendly and inquisitive and came right up to us. I got some incredible footage and it was such a perfect way to end the trip!

After dreaming about diving on the Great Barrier Reef for so long the trip definitely did not disappoint. It exceeded my expectations and i'm so happy i decided to do the live-aboard instead of a day trip as i feel i got to really experience the best of the reef. Something which may not be around forever if things keep going the way they are.