Passions of Paradise

Monday June 23

Scuba Diving! Today we went out on the boat Passions of Paradise which is a souped up catamaran that also has a sail- pretty cool. It was a one day reef trip that took us a couple hours out of Cairns and onto some smaller reefs and quays/cays. A couple of other people from our hostel were on the boat, and there were about 100 people total, which is a relatively small group for day trips on the reef.

It was sunny but a bit windy out on the water. The skipper said it was a pretty average winter day, and we were lucky it wasn't raining! The water was 25 degrees C which is pretty warm, but once you get out you are freezing! A whole lot better than Massachusetts/Alaska/New York though, where I've done all my other water activities!

Our first stop was Paradise Reef. There were 6 certified divers, and this was the first time I've been diving for fun since getting certified a year ago. It was quite a change from laying down barrier over milfoil! The Great Barrier Reef is incredible- we saw all sorts of corals and anemones, lots of fish and giant sea cucumbers. The visibility was pretty good, and we went down to 11 meters (close to 33 feet) which got a bit chilly. There was a lot to see, but it took me a little while to adjust to being underwater again after so long! A couple of the people had just finished 5 day live-aboard trips that take you much further out on the reef to spots that are rarely visited, and they said it was incredible compared to this. Now I just have something else to add to my list of things to do when I come back to Australia:)

Caitlin tried out scuba diving for the first time with an introductory dive. There were 4 divers per instructor and they got a basic lesson on mask clearing, regulator recovery, and a bit on buoyancy and navigation. They did a short, shallow dive but she enjoyed it more than snorkeling and found it less scary.

We were served a big lunch and then went to our second spot, Michalmans Cay for 2 hours. I was the only certified diver who wanted to go again- everyone else was too cold/tired, so just Dicky the dive master and I went out. It was a pretty shallow dive because I wanted to see if we could find any turtles, but the water was clear and there were some beautiful if smallish fish. I took out the underwater digital camera Caitlin and I had rented for the day and a bunch of shots of everything. About 10 min into the dive Dicky tapped his tank to get my attention and made the sign for "shark!" I looked over and HOLY CRAP! There was a black tipped reef shark not that far away. And I looked over to my right and HOLY CRAP there was another one! I got some quick pictures, but without a frame of reference it is hard to tell how big they are and how close they were. All I can say is, they were plenty big and pretty darn close- at least as big as me, and close enough Dicky could see they were both males. They were just chilling, and swam away after a couple of minutes. Diving with sharks on the Great Barrier Reef though... check that one off my life list of things to do! Momentarily terrifying, but totally awesome!

Dicky's a biologist and told me when we got out of the water that we were really lucky to see any sharks, they are getting pretty rare in the area which is really sad.

After the dive I got to snorkel for a while, and got to see sea turtles after all! One was resting on the bottom, then I saw a couple swimming later on. A bunch of people chased them to touch their shells, which you really aren't supposed to do, so I got a few photos and let them be. If I was a turtle I wouldn't want a horde of crazy snorkelers trying to catch up to me!

Around the boat there were a bunch of HUGE fish- turns out they throw bits of fish off the boat once everyone gets out of the water to give people a chance to see them from the surface. These fish know what is going on, and probably hang around the boat every day. One of these fish was twice the size of me, and got close enough to touch. Kinda freaky.

They hoisted the sail on the way back to Cairns, and one of the guys on the crew knew some crazy card tricks and entertained us for a while. All in all it was an incredible day.