Diving the Great Barrier Reef

I finished up my visit to Australia with a 3 day, 2 night dive trip aboard the ScubaPro III to the Great Barrier Reef. I left Sydney Thursday afternoon and flew up to the city of Cairns (pronounced "Cans" by the locals). The flight took almost 3 hours and we flew over a lot of sparsely populated interior farmland.

The weather in Cairns had been very wet all week. Upwards of 14 inches (375 mm) of rain had fallen in the 4 days prior to my arrival. On approach to the airport you could see the flooded roads and fields. I was hoping that the weather would cooperate for the dive trip.

I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel, checked in and then walked around the city a bit. The city of Cairns isn't very big and it is very much a tourist town. Lots of Reef and Rainforest activities being touted on every corner store. I walked over to the dive shop and checked in for the next days boat trip. I got fitted for equipment and was given some information about what to take on the boat.

The next morning at 6:15am I got picked up from the hotel and taken over to the dive shop, checked in for the trip, had a final briefing and then got taken over to the boat. The trip was full and there were 32 divers and 6 crew members. The weather was still looking pretty rough. High winds, choppy conditions and low visibility. The captain told us that the 3 hour ride out to the reefs would be probably as rough as he had ever seen it.

It was rough. About half of the group, myself included, got sick on the way out. Revisiting breakfast before a day full of diving it not the best way to start. Once we finally got out to the reef and anchored, we were sheltered somewhat from the high waves. It was still very windy and the visibility in the water was only about 5 meters. The water was very warm at 29C (85F) and the most I wore in the ocean was a full body lycra "stinger suit" that provided some level of protection from the various hazards like coral and jellyfish.

Despite the less than perfect conditions, diving on the reef was spectacular. More types of coral and fish than you can count. I took lots of pictures with my underwater camera. We saw sea turtles, sea snakes, sharks, cuttlefish, giant clams and did I mention fish? We probably saw over a hundred different species on every dive.

The ScubaPro III dive boat.

Each dive went to a different part of the reefs and over the course of 3 days we were at two reefs, Milln and Flynn, and visited several anchorages (Petaj, Gordon's, Tracy's, Tennis Courts, and the Whale Bommie). The water visibility was slowly getting better each day and the wind was also calming down a bit. I ended up doing 10 dives over the 3 days (including one night dive). I also managed to find my sea legs and didn't get sick the rest of the trip. Another challenge for me was learning to dive using the metric system. Bar instead of psi, meters vs. feet, kilograms instead of pounds, centigrade vs. fahrenheit. The Pro Dive Cairns crew was fantastic and I can't say enough about how well organized and helpful they were. The boat, equipment, food and accommodations were all top notch. If you want to dive the Great Barrier Reef, I highly recommend them. As they would say - No Worries!

And yes, we even found Nemo.

True Clown Anemonefish