The Great Barrier Reef

The attraction I was most excited about in Cairns was, of course, the Great Barrier Reef.  The Reef is over 2,600 km long and is actually made up of just over 2,900 individual reefs.  By the bye, Cairns is pronounced "Cans" in Australia.  Clayton told us some long involved story about an explorer named Cristoforo (Christie) Palmerston who got cheated out of his pay and therefore spitefully withheld the location of a fantastic train route he'd found from a nearby town called Innisfail, so Innisfail failed and Cairns got the train and remains the most important coastal city in Queensland.  Today, 3 million people visit Cairns each year, while Innisfail receives some paltry number that Wikipedia does not care to display, even though both are about as close to the reef.

At any rate, we were in Cairns, and the reef is near Cairns, and by the transitive property we were near the reef.  So we went!  I spent three days in a row diving the reef, at several different sites on two different reefs.

On Tuesday the whole Colgate group went on a day trip with the Deep Sea Diver's Den company.  I'm guessing it was about 50-60 people on a highly-commercialized boat with a rather loud engine.  We motored out about an hour and a half to Norman reef.  Their system was incredibly efficient - I definitely give them that.  Divers went one way, non-certified divers that wanted to try diving went another, and snorkelers went in a third direction for individual briefings.  Then the boat anchored and everyone was shuffled into the water as quickly as possible.

For certified divers, you could pay an extra $15 a dive to go with a guide, or go unguided with a buddy.  I wasn't all that impressed with the guides, and Lauren and Claire and I decided to dive together without a guide.  It was actually really cool.  It was the first time I'd dove without a guide.  It was an easy site - spectacular water clarity, and all you had to do was keep the reef on one side on the way out, and on the other side on the way in.  We had fun going at whatever pace we felt like.

But here we were on a touristy dive boat with a ton of divers and snorkelers around and the reef was still seriously everything it's cracked up to be.  You know all those postcard pictures and nature movies and animations in Finding Nemo?  That's exactly what it's like.  Deep blue water, sun streaming down, a coral wall dropping straight off into the ocean, colorful coral, and fish everywhere.  We didn't see anything really notable in the two dives we did on Norman reef beyond the most spectacular fish and coral you can imagine. 

But if it wasn't for the spectacularness of the reef itself, I wouldn't have been all that impressed with the trip.  There was plenty of free time on board that crew members could have talked to us, but never once did someone mention why the reef was important, or warn us to be careful for any reason other than avoiding things that can hurt you.  So many tourists could get some new knowledge on a cruise like that, and they didn't try for any of it.

Fortunately, my next two days were spent on a dive trip that was the total flip side of Deep Sea Diver's Den.  I did an overnight live-aboard on the 75-foot yacht Vagabond.  Not only did the Vagabond have the advantage of a set of sails and a very quiet motor, it also was small - there were eight passengers and three crew members on board.  Four of the passengers weren't certified divers - a Chinese couple and two Korean friends - and I didn't get to know them much at all.  The other four of us were certified - Stefan, who was Swedish and probably in his mid-thirties, and a brother and a sister, Kit and Kari, who were just finishing medical school and a master's degree respectively.  Stefan was my dive buddy most of the time, and I especially had a great time hanging out with Kit and Kari (though it got quite confusing when it was Kit, Kari, and Karen).

Since the Vagabond is small, it has a roving permit and can go to a lot of the reefs that the bigger boats don't have access to.  We went about 42 km offshore to Thetford Reef, and it took us three or four hours to get there.  There was no wind on Wednesday, so we motored out.  On the way there, crew member and dive master Jon gave us a reef talk, including facts about the reef and its importance and pictures of a lot of the creatures we might see.  Score one for the Vagabond.  There were also lots of books available to us on board, including guides to reef corals and fish and such.  It was also easy to ask the very knowledgeable crew members questions since there were so few passengers.

We did three dives and one snorkel the first day.  We started at a place called 360, since there are 360 small pieces of the reef in the area.  Jon dove with us.  We were all competent divers, so his main role was to show us the coolest places and to point out interesting things that we might have missed on our own.  For whatever bizarre reason, I usually ended up with wayyyy more air than anybody else (on the dives in Shell Harbour, I was consistently one of the first to run out.  Not sure why it changed, but not complaining!).  So when other people ran out first, Jon would signal the direction of the boat for the other divers and then take me further. 

After 360 we headed to a site called Mystery, where we did another dive.  Then we moved to the Lagoon, where we did a snorkel and a dive, and also anchored for the night.  When Jon briefed us on the site, it was pretty mind-blowing.  He pointed behind him at a spot that shelters black- and white-tipped reef sharks.  To his left was a turtle cleaning station, where sea turtles go to get their shells cleaned by small fish.  Past that was a sandy area full of rays.  And in front of him was a forest of giant clams.  One or two things to see, maybe?

On the dive at Mystery I saw a blue-spotted ray, but I was the only one to see it.  It wasn't until Kit and Kari and I snorkeled at the Lagoon that we saw the sea turtles.  We swam around from the shark haven for a good ways and had almost given up hope, when Kit stuck his head out of the water yelling "I see a turtle!  I see a turtle!"  And sure enough, a big green sea turtle came to a large area of soft coral, soon followed by a second turtle, to have his shell cleaned.

After dinner we did a night dive.  I'd done one night dive before and loved it, and this one was also great.  It's kind of eerie being underwater in complete darkness, but after you get below the surface its not too bad.  We had glowsticks tied to our tanks and underwater flashlights that tended to attract swarms of little tiny shrimpy things, just like moths swarm to lights.  Jon told us to shine our lights at the coral and look for red glints, and those were the eyes of crustaceans.  We saw quite a few, including a really fancy zebra mantis shrimp.  We also saw sleeping parrot fish.  Each night they make themselves a mucus sleeping bag to shield their heartbeats from sharks.  At one point, Jon caught a cuttlefish smaller than the size of a fingernail in the beam of his flashlight - the smallest cuttlefish he or any of us had ever seen.  But the best part was the sea turtle - a BIG sea turtle, a good four feet across - sleeping in the reef.  When sea turtles sleep, they put their heads inside a hole in the reef, and just float there, looking for all the world like a little kid going "you can't see me!"

When we got back on the boat they had a fantastic dessert for us.  Paul, the captain, turned off all of the lights on board.  We could see other ships on the horizon, but very far away.  A big storm in the distance was making beautiful lightning, and everywhere else the southern stars were spectacular.

The next morning we were in the water snorkeling by 6:30.  The wind had picked up a ton overnight, and a short rain squall left us with a rainbow to snorkel beneath.  Not too long after jumping in I saw my first reef shark - a white-tipped reef shark, maybe four or five feet long.  It was the first time in my life I got to yell "SHARK!!!!" (to alert Kit and Kari) and actually mean it.

After breakfast we moved to a place called Canyons, which really was made of coral canyons.  It was probably my favorite dive.  Jon took us through little tiny slots that I never would have tried on my own, but it was easy with his example.  I'm not all that experienced a diver, and this trip was the first time that I really felt like I had a grip on the technical aspects and complete control of my buoyancy.  Maybe that's why I was so much better about conserving air.

Our last stop was back at 360.  We were going to go to another site, but the winds were so high that the water was too choppy, and 360 was pretty sheltered.  By this point we were all utterly exhausted, and spent a while getting up the energy to jump in for one last snorkel.  Jon thought I was too slow so he soaked me with a hose until I jumped in.  I was certainly glad I did.  We were close to heading in when Kit caught site of a leopard shark just going into a little arch in the reef.  He was only a couple feet long, and very pretty.  They aren't as commonly seen on the reef.  Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, because we watched him for a very long time.  Just as we were heading in we also got a great look at another blue spotted ray.

Since it was a windy day we got to sail back to Cairns, double-reefed and just using the main.  Swells were a good 8-10 feet in unprotected areas, so we spent most of the time just hanging on as much as we could.  Eventually things got a bit calmer, and Paul told us we could go up on the bow if we wanted.  Of course I wanted to, and for the first ten minutes it was great.  Then a huge wall of water came over the rail and totally soaked me (it missed Kit and Kari entirely), and I looked back to see Paul smugly waving.  I was soaked for the rest of the trip.

It was a little more expensive to do the Vagabond trip than it would have been for the more commercialized boats, but it was worth all of it.  If you ever go up to the reef, look for something like the Vagabond - you'll learn more and really get a more personalized experience.  I also have lots more pictures on Facebook if you'd like to see some more.

And yes, we did indeed find Nemo (or at least clown fish)!