Let me first say that this is the best experience I’ve had in Australia by far. Believe the hype. This is one of the 7 wonders of the world for a reason.
I start my journey in Cairns (pronounced “Cans”) which is the last point up the east coast of Australia for most people. It’s a major destination because this is where you can reach the outer reef. It’s also a backpacker haven as well as a night life city. Though it’s small it has a bunch of places to go out.
I haven’t seen many aboriginal people in Australia but there are a fair bit of them here in Cairns. They are dressed like normal people and are largely ignored or even avoided like African Americans. Speaking of shocking facts, America is no longer rated as the fattest nation in the world. You guessed it, it’s Australia. Don’t believe me? Look it up. I spoke with a girl who was studying cultural diversity at the University of Sydney and she said that the racism that is held towards aboriginals in Australia is a really big problem even to this day.
I walked into a neighborhood travel agent and said I wanted to book a dive boat. She gave me several choices that were priced at about $170 USD for only 2 dives in the day. Then she gave me the option of an overnight boat that was running 6 dives for $210 USD. It didn’t take a genius to see that the CPD (cost per dive) was extremely low. I figured, well how bad could it be? It’s only one night and two days.
In addition to that apprehension, there is a lot of talk about how much the reef has been dyeing over the past 10 years due to global warming. Reefs need 3 things to survive and one of them is consistent water temperature. While traveling up the coast I had received reports that 70%-80% of the coral was already dead. While we are here, another interesting fact: coral grows only a few millimeters per year. So if you see a piece of brain coral (looks like a brain) the size of a car, it’s thousands of years old.
My boat’s name was the Rum Runner so I thought it might end up being a booze cruise, but with 6 dives on the ticket this fate was unlikely. With six dives in 2 days, you are essentially only coming out of the water to eat and sleep. The Rum Runner had 4 crew and 14 divers. It looked like a simple 50-60 foot sailboat and was much bigger and spacious than the Prima (the 11 man couples boat that I was on in Whitsundays.)
Everyone working on the boat was very fun and sarcastic. Everyone who worked of the boat were amazing divers as well (which is why they were working on the boat in the first place (to dive the great barrier reef on a daily basis). The skipper (Rich) was the mellow one of the bunch while the head dive master was the firecracker. He was always thinking, talking, and doing a mile a minute. This guy was really passionate about the reef and you could tell that this was his calling. Turns out, Rich and Jase are co owners of the Rum Runner. It really shows when they make decisions about how to operate the boat. They also had a cook (Bev) and a Scuba helper (forgot her name). Bev showed a bunch of ownership in the boat because it was her home as well. She lives on the boat full time.
Once again I went through the motions of meeting all of the new people during the trip. The funny this time was that my dive buddy (Andy) ended up being from Huntington Beach, less than a mile away from where my parents live. Andy is 31 years old working in Sports Television Production. His wife, a 29 year old nurse. They were traveling for 2 weeks in Australia which reminded me about how most Americans travel for such a short time.
As we left the harbor, I prayed for good weather and high underwater visibility. This was the big show. The scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef is such a monumental experience that you want the conditions to be perfect, not ok, and not good, perfect. This is the outer reef, the shelf that drops into Deep Ocean. This is the stuff that has been making it into the National Geographic magazines for the past 30 years. We’re talking about underwater mountains of coral that span 150 feet and millions of years in age. As we made our way out of the harbor, the water was glassy. For the next two days there wasn’t a whisper of wind.
The water was 88 degrees at the surface and about 84 degrees at depth. The visibility was 70+ feet. The tides were scheduled to change very little in the next few days as well. The conditions were perfect, not ok, not good; perfect.
For the first dive we dropped down to about 21 meters (I am only certified to go to 18 meters) and I was shocked at what I saw. I was actually freaking out a little because when we descended in magnetic island, the visibility was so poor that you didn’t really get the visual sensation of going down. The visibility was excellent on the GBR so it was really the first time I really experienced sinking like a stone to depths that were deeper than a human was ever naturally intended to go. The bottom that we dropped down to was barren. It was almost grey. The small bits of coral were all dead. Had all of the roomers been true about the health of the coral? Was this going to be 6 dives through a nuclear fallout look-alike zone? We swam for about 10 minutes until we got to a wall. This wall was about 60 feet high and the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef.
As we swam along the wall, we begun to ascend and as we made our way to the shallower parts, the sea life exploded into a busy underwater metropolis. Thousands of fish of all shapes and sizes seemed to be going about their business. Some ignored the rest while some seemed to be paper boys spreading the news of the reef to the others. It was amazing. As much as a rainforest has thousands of things going on behind the scenes, a reef is all out in the open. Everyone knows each other’s business. It’s as if I had entered a glass city.
Sure the big fish were impressive, but the tiny peanut sized ones that came in electric coloring and mechanical synchronization made me pinch myself to see if I had been dreaming. We even saw a white tipped reef shark laying on the bottom waiting motionless. I thought that all species of shark (minus the nurse shark) had to keep swimming forward or they would die, but these sharks would lie on the floor until something got close enough to make it swim away. How big was it? Ummmm, probably about as big as me. Maybe a little smaller. I wasn’t freaked out by the shark because it wasn’t behaving aggressively. It wasn’t mysteriously somewhere below me. It was right out in the open, taking a nap. We didn’t see any turtles but the reef and the fish were amazing.
The second dive was the best dive by far. The site was “the three sisters” which are a series of underwater sky scrapers. This time the skipper (Rich) lead the dive and the most amazing thing happened. There were schools upon schools of small fish, undulating with marksmen precision. They swarmed and swirled around one of these pillars as a great barracuda (5 feet long) watched patiently. It was one of those moments where I had to check to see if I was on acid. Such an overload to the senses that I thought I might pop. The fish enveloped us and their billions of reflections sent us into a trance. Some schools of fish were 2-3 inches long and modestly dressed while some schools where neon blue and about half an inch long.
As I surfaced from the second dive I wanted to just scream. Scream for an hour to vent my nerves. But I looked around for a while and saw that all the other divers were just about calm. Did they even open their eyes? Are they nuts? Did they even know where they are?
Between dives, I went snorkeling and ran into two turtles. One turtle was about two feet long and the other turtle probably measured up to my chest. Words won’t describe how cute and cuddly these creatures seem under water. They just go about their business like you aren’t there; completely harmless. I hear they actually are one of the best meats that you can eat too.
Next came the reef talk from Jase at night before our night dive. He told us about all of the different types of coral and fish that we might see and what not to do specifically to make sure we don’t leave an impact on the reef. The parrot fish has a parrot like beak that is made for chomping up coral and pooping out sand. They also barf up a mucus coat that covers their entire body from emitting smells and vibrations at night so that they can sleep. The mucus acts as a cloak from predators when they wake in the morning they eat it as their first meal of the day. If you flash a light in their eye they will break the cloak and most likely swim till exhaustion and death.
Next there is the sea turtle that comes up for air every 3 hours and comes back to sleep in the coral where its heart beats only a few times a minute. If you shin your light in its face it will wake up abruptly and gasp, taking in a gulp of water and most certainly die just like you or me. Jase told us that if he saw any turtles float to the surface during our night dive, that he would personally kill us.
After the talk he said “Alright, let’s get in the water” and just as he said that, one of the crew blasted the Jaws theme music on the boats sound system. It was a joke that only an Aussie could love. I wondered how often people would drop out of that dive after they heard that music. It was probably the last place I wanted to hear that music apart from in the actual water. Surprisingly enough, none of the divers dropped out of the night dive.
Though we had flashlights, we were essentially ascending into total darkness. Nothing came closer to feeling like you were in space than here. This was a totally wild experience. We swam around and didn’t see hardly anything. All the fish had been put away for the night. I thought I was a bit of a rip off but the sensation of floating in the night still made it worth it. Then we came around a corner and Rich was pointing at a 6-8 foot turtle, nestled in a large shelf of coral. I couldn’t believe it. It was absolutely gigantic. It was much bigger than me indeed. Surprisingly enough, absolutely no one shinned their light in its face. Soon after we saw that we saw a buffalo parrot fish that must have been 300 pounds. The night dive was a total success. Upon surfacing in the 85 degree water we went from an underwater space expedition to the star soaked skyline. Black below us and black above us.
That night a thick accented German girl who was a diver on the boat sang with her guitar. She sang Tracy Chapman and Janis Joplin; Guns & Roses and Jewel. This girl could sing circles around all of these songs. Her deceptively thick accent for conversations melted away along with all of our hearts as she sang like a bird flies. We asked her if she was a professional singer back in Germany and she laughed and said that her singing was just a hobby and that she didn’t want to get carried away from why she sings in the first place. Essentially she just wanted to keep it real J either way, I could marry that voice.
Before the night dive we at the Spanish Mackerel that Jase caught off the back of the boat just a few hours earlier. It was amazing to each such fresh fish. To top off the night, all of the crew and most of the divers slept out on the deck of the boat under the stars.
The next day we did two more dives and after that we headed back to Cairns. On the way back, as the boat was still moving about 7 miles per hour, all of the crew and most of the divers ended up jumping into the water and holding onto a large rope. We were trolling with humans J. It was just one of those spontaneous things that people can do when they own the boat.