The Great Barrier Reef

The highlight of my trip to Cairns came Sunday. I finally got to get out on the Great Barrier Reef and even got to do some scuba diving. Unfortunately, it was a very gloomy and rainy day and we were pretty wet even before getting in the water. They had told us that the weather out on the reef is always much better than in Cairns, but it was so bad in Cairns that it would have had to get extremely better out on the reef to actually be good and it wasn’t. Also on the way out to our spot on the reef, which is about 18 miles off the coast of Cairns, I began to get a little sick to my stomach. So, I just had to lie down on the boat in a position that would minimize most of the rocking and I was ok. It really wasn’t too bad at all and I’m certain that some of the uneasiness in my stomach was due to the nervousness of what I was about to do.

Throughout the hour and a half boat ride out to the reef, the captain of the Falla, Doug, talked to us about coral, some history of the reef itself and a bit about his past. He actually grew up in Miami and spent a lot of time in the Bahamas before moving on to Australia. But we also received some instruction from Greg, the dive instructor, about hand signals we would use below the water. He said that as soon as we got to our spot we were going to jump right in and he wasn’t joking. When we got there he already had us geared up and went through a couple training exercises and we hopped in the water! Once we got in the water we had to go through a few more exercises to make sure that we were ok to go down. Now, I’ll tell you that when I first got in the water and started moving around with all that gear, it was very tough. Breathing through the mouthpiece was also sort of difficult at first, but just because I had to learn to trust it and breathe deeply and slowly. When really I probably wasn’t, I gave Greg the ready sign to go on down.

As soon as I got to the ocean floor, I was almost immediately much calmer. We went down about 10 meters, which is about 30 feet, but I think that just finally seeing what it was like and getting rid of the anxiety that had been building all day was what calmed me. As soon as everyone made it down though and we were given free reign to explore, I was off!

Before I left the US, Carrie, my travel agent, said that I should scuba dive no matter what the cost is because it’s such a whole different world under the sea. Well, luckily I didn’t have to pay very much at all for it, but she was totally right about how different and neat and beautiful it is. I can’t begin to describe how awesome it is down on the reef. There are so many beautiful fish of all sizes and colors and the coral is just magnificent. And this was all on a cloudy and rainy day. I can’t imagine how it would be if it was sunny. Towards the beginning of the dive Greg waved at me to come over toward him and pointed at the sand underneath him. I couldn’t see anything but figured there was a snake under the sand or something. Then he stirred it up a bit more and then out comes this big Lagoon Ray. It was much bigger than what I was expecting to come up from the sand and it moved pretty slowly so I got to take a great little video of it. I rented an underwater digital camera, but once I got down under the water and realized how difficult it is to keep yourself still I got a little frustrated and started to just enjoy what I was seeing instead of trying to take photos of everything. Toward the end of the dive, we found a big collection of coral with lots of much bigger fish and one of them even started chasing me a little bit. Whenever I would point at it, it looked at me and then swam toward me. It seemed to really like swimming around me, I guess. You can see the picture here of it with me. It’s kind of far behind in this picture, but trust me he was pretty big and could have probably bitten my finger off if he wanted to.

Unfortunately, I know that my photos again will absolutely not do the reef justice, but I at least got some photos of myself under the water. But I will echo what Carrie told me and say that no matter what it costs you, everyone should definitely scuba dive if you ever get the chance. You will not regret it and it’s worth every penny you spend.