We’re leaving on a jet plane…….

26 January 2007

We left Townsville on the overnight bus and headed North to Cairns. On ariving in Cairns we checked into our guesthouse and caught up on some much needed sleep. We spent the rest of the day wandering about getting our bearings and checking in with the dive company which would be taking us out to the Great Barrier Reef on a two night/three day liveaboard.

The trip, a Christmas Present from Chris’s parents (thanks again – it was a wonderful present!), included 11 dives on the great barrier reef and would provide us the opportunity to become qualified as ‘advanced open water’ divers. Excited at the prospect of 11 dives we decided to treat ourselves to a snorkel and mask each before heading home to complete the first section of our study manuals.

After an early start and three hours getting out to the reef, during which I successfully managed to keep my breakfast down, we arrived at the site of our first dive.

The first two dives of the day were classified as ‘fun dives’ which allowed us to enjoy the reef and the marine life without having to complete tasks required for the qualification. When we first started diving, five months ago in Fiji, we said that we could not envisage ever diving without a guide, well we were wrong as on the second dive we were on our own!

It is strongly advised that you should always dive with a ‘dive buddy’ in case something unexpected hapens , ie run out of air (which is not something you really want to be doing!). Communication with a dive buddy takes the form of hand signals or as we found out on the second dive a message of madness can quite easily be communicated by giving the old ‘angry eyes’ expression! We basically got lost (due to a slight current) and had no idea what direction the boat was. After coming to the surface for a ‘sneaky peak’ (yep official dive lingo!) we were back on track now travelling in the direction of the boat however our air supply reached the recommended surfacing level before reaching the boat …so we had a approximately 100m to swim against the current to get ourselves back to the boat which is not easy when you have heavy eqiptment strapped to your back. When we finally made it back to the boat we found we were far from alone in having to swim back (some had to be picked up by the dinghy) but it was a lesson learnt and after that dive we were always aware of the direction of the boat.

The next dive was our first advanced course dive and was the much needed ‘navigation dive’ where we had to make use of our compasses, natural navigation markers and distances.

The last dive of day one was the ‘night dive’ where you can see all sorts of marine life that doesn’t come out to play during the day. Back in groups for this dive along with a dive instructor, we were each given a torch by which we would be able to see the marine life which hunts at night. Before the dive I was a little aprehensive but once underwater our eyesight soon adjusted and any nerves were quick to disappear. It is also far easier to identify where the dive boat is as providing you don’t swim for miles you can see the bright lights of the boat wherever you are. In terms of the marine life the dive was not the best although we did see one turtle and a huge sea worm! At this stage you may laugh at us getting excited over a worm but take the good old garden worm – supersize it to 1.5m long and make it white and green in colour and you have the sea worm we saw – slightly more exciting than the garden variety I am sure you’ll agree!

DAY TWO

The first dive on day two was the deep dive. To become and advanced diver it is necessary to have dived safely down to a depth of 30m. The deeper a dive the increased chance of developing nitrogen narcosis. The condition causes loss of motor function and decision-making ability and can be more clearly defined as causing one to become “drunk”, as with alcoholic beverages. During the dive we compared the time to complete a task at depth with that at the surface and everyones times were significantly slower!

The second and third dives of day two were our final advanced course elective dives. Out of the three choices on offer to us we chose a photography dive, to make use of our newly purchase underwater housing for our camera, and the naturalist dive (no that does not mean naked scuba diving!) where we learn to identify different types of marine life. It was during these two dives which we got to see turtles, clown fish (nemo fish – Chris took a great photo which we have attached to the blog) and a white tipped reef shark which we were able to get some video footage (not attached as it takes too long to upload). Once again we were diving alone but thankfully managed to navigate ourselves back to the boat on both occasions.

Now fully qualified advance divers we headed out on the last dive of day 2 – a second night dive – but this time we were alone! After planning our dive to ensure we would not be getting lost (a prospect neither of us fancied with no surrounding land and pitch black sky!) we set out following another pair of divers ….having not seen a great deal on the way out – except the red eyes of crustaceans- our air reached the limit at which we had planned to turn around. In order to keep our first self-navigated night dive as simple as possible we planned to head back in the same direction which we had come. This proved a brilliant idea as there were no other divers about, which meant less torches to scare off the marine nightlife; consequently we managed to see a blue spotted lagoon ray, a turtle and most exciting of all a massive Moray Eel which hissed at us to tell us he wasn’t too fond of the torches we were shining in his direction.

DAY THREE

Three fun dives marked the last day on the liveaboard.

The first was at 6am in order that we could catch different marine life to that we had already seen. We saw our second shark on this dive which allowed us to get fairly close before it swam off into the distance.

The last two dives were at a site called the ‘ski slopes’. It was during these dives that we were able to spot ‘nudibranchs’. Nudibranchs, also known as sea slugs, are some of the most beautiful and diverse creatures in the ocean. Nudibranchs are essentially snails without shells, and their name literally means “naked gill”. They come in all different shapes and colours ranging frm hot pink to bright orange, balck, to neon green. They are not very big and are therefore difficult to spot so the Phyllidia ocellata we found was a gem of a find!

The last dive of the day, proved how much we had progressed in the last few days as it proved a new underwater record of 54 mins for us showing we had become a lot more relaxed under the surface.

This trip has definately been one of the highlights (although there have been many!) of the trip so far…..thanks again Jane and David for a wonderful present!

Tags: Australia

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