Scuba Diving

Hello from the Great Barrier Reef!

   My last four days at Kutchera were busy, but still fun.  On Sunday evening Belinda and I took a stroll down to the river with the dogs.  

Belinda

The water was still warm after the heat of the day and the dogs had a wonderful time swimming and searching for the rocks Belinda would toss into the water.  Over the weekend Dan was gone, and he returned with a six week old Border Collie puppy.  She is so cute!  Dan has named her Gibbit. 

Dan with Rocky and Gibbit

   Monday was my final day of fencing.  I must admit that while I like riding the motor bikes and seeing all the scenery, I was very happy to be done with the hot, dusty work of checking the fences. 

    On Tuesday I helped Belinda prepare the lower house for mustering.  While bringing in the cattle to vaccinate and sort, Belinda and her mustering team will make take their meals in the lower house and use the house itself as a temporary headquarters.  Wednesday we went around the house doing general chores and I got all of my gear ready to leave. 

    Thursday was a sad day as I left Kutchera and said good-bye to everyone.  By the evening the bus had dropped me off in Cairns and my Aunt Carol and Uncle Dana were there to meet me at the bus station.  We spent the night in Cairns and then were picked up early the next morning to begin our first, three day adventure out on the Great Barrier Reef. 

Sunrise as the boat leaves the harbor on our first day

We are diving off of a two separate three day live aboard tours with Pro-Dive Cairns.  The first morning we spent doing safety briefings on our way out to the reef.  The boat ride out to the reef took 3 hours, and most of the morning.  Ater safety briefing, we were assigned our rooms.  The boat has three levels with 15 bedrooms and 8 heads.  Each bedroom has either a large two person bed, or a set of bunk beds.  The top level has three rooms with two heads, the wheel house and a back deck with benches.  The second level of the boat has the main deck with all of the scuba equipment, rinse off showers, and duck board where enter and exit the water.  Inside on the second level is the galley and the saloon where we take our meals.  And on the bottom level are more rooms with four more heads.  I was assigned a room on this top level which I was fortunate enough to share with a Maree. 

Maree

Maree is a certified diver and buddied up with us on several dives.  On this first trip the boat was completely full.  We had a group of about fourteen gap year kids from Denmark and some other backpackers who were part of two open water certification classes that were completing their required open water dives.  Besides Aunt Carol, Uncle Dana, Maree and myself, there were five other certified divers.  Four of these divers were also from Denmark and the fifth was a local diver.  There were also two snorkelers on board. 

Dining in the Saloon

The boat has a captain, cook (this time there was also a cook in training), three diving instructors because of the number of students, a instructor who was completing his dive master training, and a dive supervisor.  The instructors instruct open water and advanced open water courses and the dive supervisor does all of the dive briefings and makes sure that everything runs smoothly.  Dive briefings usually consist of a hand drawn map of the site, complete with depths and areas of special interest.  The dive supervisor then informs the certified divers about the site, and gives us some different dive plans we can follow for the particular site.  The diver supervisor also sets a maximum dive depth and time. 

The Great Barrier Reef

   As soon as the boat was secured to the mooring blocks at our first site, the dive supervisor gave us our briefing and we donned our gear.  All of the gear is provided by the company, but divers are welcome to bring their own gear as well.  The water was about 85 degrees.  Our first dive site was on Milln Reef and it was a pretty simple site to dive.  As soon as we entered the water I could see fish everywhere.  The fish are the most amazing colors of purple, pink, electric blue, bright green, neon yellow, orange, and more.  The corals are also brightly colored and the sand is a beautiful white. 

A Unicorn Fish

I spent most of the first dive pointing and blowing bubbles out of my mask, acting  like a little kid in a candy store.  Swimming on the Barrier Reef is akin to being dunked into the world’s largest aquarium, and it looks like a scene from Finding Nemo but without the animation and talking fish.  On this first dive, besides the numerous fish, we saw a moray eel sticking its head out of its den of coral.  Our second dive of the day was at the same location and we continued to see new creatures, including a blue spotted sting ray and several types of large sea cucumbers.  For our third dive we changed sides of the reef and on that site we saw a lion fish and a large grouper.  The next day we continued to eat, sleep and dive. 

Anemone Fish

We did four dives including a night dive.  The first two dives were Flynn Reef, which has a large bommie in the middle with a wall that goes down to 20 meters on the side.   “Bommie” is the Australian term for a large outcropping of coral.  There are two types of coral, hard and soft.  The hard corals are little fan like creatures that live together en-masse, and each creature has its own little limestone shell it secretes for itself.  The hard corals expand as the old coral creatures die and the new ones form their own protective covering on top of the old coral’s limestone shell.     

One of the smaller bommies with hard coral

    The third dive we did was a pre-dive to familiarize ourselves with the location of our night dive.  During our afternoon dive I saw a yellow black-spotted box fish, two turtles, and several kinds of parrot fish.  The night dive was not as scary as I thought it would be.  First of all the boat itself has flood lights underneath, so if you do get lost, all you have to do is swim toward the light.  And secondly, every diver is equipped with a very bright flash light. The dive location is known as “Gordons” and it has a group of three bommies known as Mickey Mouse.  At night a large sea turtle named Brian, sleeps in a sandy alcove at the base of one of the bommies.  And we were lucky enough to see Brian asleep in his home.  We were told that Brian is over one hundred and forty years old.  He is about the size of a medium coffee table.  We also saw a few reef sharks out hunting and lots of little red eyes from the shrimp hiding between the coral. 

Sunset at sea

    On our third day we started out on our dive and I was in charge of navigation.  I failed miserably.  I started out all wrong because when we descended I became turned around and took my compass heading from the wrong mooring block.  We ended up out in water that was much deeper than the depth we were suppose to be diving at.  Thankfully, Aunt Carol and Uncle Dana pulled me back from the abyss and we just dived in more shallow water for the rest of the day.  We had two more dives that morning, both on a very nice reef with plenty of little bommies.  We saw another eel and some very pretty fish.  The boat then returned to Cairns that afternoon. 

Aunt Carol after one of our dives

We spent the night ashore and then in the morning headed out on the same boat, but with a new group of divers. 

Aunt Carol and Uncle Dana enjoying the boat ride

On the trip back out to the reef we enjoyed the beautiful day and saw some dolphins playing in the waves generated by the boat. 

Dolphins!

Yesterday we spent our first dive back at a familiar reef.  I had no trouble with navigation on that reef.  We saw some interesting nudibranchs (sea slugs) and some beautiful white fan coral.  We then moved on to a new dive sight, named the “whale” because it has a slit along one side that spews up water like a whale’s blow hole during rough seas.  We saw some more turtles and two lion fish.  The water was beautiful and the dive was fairly simple.  We dove at the same sight for both our afternoon and night dive and ran across of school of Bump Headed Parrot fish.  The night dive was beautiful.  Hard corals keep their polyps, or feathery tentacles, hidden inside their shells during the day, but at night they feed and so the polyps come out.  These feathery structures are generally the same color as the hard outside of the coral and so it makes the coral seem like it has sprouted colorful fur. 

A  large Butterfly Fish

  Today was another day full of diving.  Four dives total.  We had three dives sites today.  This morning we dove the whale again and saw an even larger number of Bump Headed Parrot fish, then we changed reefs and dove on Flynn reef.  These sites are now a bit familiar since we dove on them the last trip.  The afternoon and evening dives were especially good for turtles.  This afternoon Aunt Carol was almost run over by a small female turtle wanting her picture taken.  And then tonight we saw the large turtle that lives on Gordons dive site.  And we also saw a very large trumpet fish and while we were waiting to climb the ladder back onto the boat we watched the Grey Reef sharks circling around underneath the boat. 

Sunrise over the ocean

  Tomorrow is our last day of diving and then we will have a few days of sightseeing.  More photos soon.    

 Love,

   Hana