After getting certified to SCUBA dive in Thailand in November, I had my sights set on diving on the Great Barrier Reef while in Australia. We arranged an overnight trip on a live aboard and I had been looking forward to it for months. We had a great time and I can't wait to have the live aboard experience again. However, at the same time it left me disappointed and wanting a whole lot more.
Pros:
- The reef was pristine: incredible soft and hard corals
- We pretty much had the reef to ourselves with only one other dive boat in sight
- At all times it was very evident that the main objective of the crew was our safety and the safety of the reef
- Great visibility
- I got my first night dive under my belt
- We were provided with high quality diving gear
Cons:
- We only explored one reef, Milne
- I had expected to see more of everything: more turtles, more sharks, more fish. I thought we'd see many large schools of fish. I thought that everything we'd see would be much bigger and older than what we saw in the shores off of Thailand and Vietnam. I thought we'd see species of wildlife that we had never seen before.
- While I don't think the crew could have been more passionate about diving on the Great Barrier Reef, which is a great environment to be in, they oversold what they expected to see over and over again. In our pre-dive briefings, they'd talk about things like, the "resident" shark that hangs out with us on this site, we always see lots of sharks during the night dive, we'll see plenty of turtles, etc. I'm a fan of under-promising and over-delivering. Unfortunately, my feeling after each dive was one of disappointment.
Now, after saying all of that, let me be clear that I had a great time. I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef! The reef was incredible and we saw more diverse and impressive coral than we have ever seen before. In addition to seeing cute and adorable colorful reef fish (pretty much all the same ones we saw in Thailand/Vietnam), we also saw one turtle, a gray reef shark, a white tipped reef shark, a school of a dozen large barracuda and a school of what must have been at least one hundred parrot fish. I just thought we'd see a lot more of the above in a bigger and better fashion.
Before deciding to go to the Great Barrier Reef, we'd heard conflicting things about how good the diving actually is there. While I think it was listed on every "Top 10 Dive Sites" list I came across, there were a lot of caveats and color commentary. With the Great Barrier Reef spanning over 2000 kilometers and containing 3000 individual reefs I'm not surprised. How can you generalize the topic of diving on the GBR when the actual location of the dive sight could be in such a vast area? One thing regarding what I read was very consistent: get as far out as you can, meaning, visit the reefs furthest away from shore. There are plenty of reefs that can be visited on day trips from the mainland so naturally if you get further out the reef, your dive sights will have seen fewer people and be more untouched by careless humans. So that's exactly what we did: we booked a night aboard a live aboard that would take us to the outer reefs. They don't guarantee which reefs you'll visit as where they can take you depends on the weather and sea conditions. The outfit we went with had almost two dozen moorings, more than most companies so I felt comfortable that no matter what the conditions, we'd have options. I also chose a small live aboard as I had read dozens of reviews about negative experiences on big boats, and I wanted to ensure that I was diving in small groups with people I trusted. Despite my Advanced Certification, I still consider myself a new diver. That combined with our bad experience in Ko Lipe with Forra Diving, I wanted to remove as much anxiety as possible and thought that being in a small group would achieve that. It definitely did. We went with Coral Sea Dreaming out of Cairns on a sailboat that can hold twelve divers or snorkelers and three crew members. I was very surprised when we boarded and learned that only six of us were diving and the rest only snorkeling. No big deal, just surprised. The crew, who doubled as dive guides, chefs, sailors and comedians were great. The boat was a 52 foot steel sailboat, smaller than I expected it to be but I had a great time and look forward to another trip on a live aboard. After having this one-night/five-dive experience, I know that I would enjoy a multi-night trip with more dives. Too bad these outings are so damn expensive.
On the first day, after four hours of sailing across rough seas we arrived at the Milne Reef and did our first of three dives for the day. My last dive had been in January so it was good to get back in the water. The visibility was very good and it was great to see old friends again: parrotfish, wrasse, clownfish (Nemo!) etc. We rented an underwater camera for the two days so Jake got to practice his underwater photography skills. Unfortunately the camera was acting up on the dive when we saw the barracuda up close and the sharks and turtle were too far away to get a good shot of them.
Check out the striped surgeonfish gliding along. This is my favorite photo from the dives.
Brain coral....never had seen this before. Looks like a planet if you ask me!
That's me with some tiny cool looking fish and pristine coral.
I'm not sure what kind of fish these are, but I think that this is a great photo.
I was petrified to do a night dive. However, it's something I wanted to try in my lifetime so why not do it for the first time on the Great Barrier Reef? We had a thorough briefing and with the hopes of seeing many sharks and turtles, how could I not go? After we jumped into the water, I looked at Jake and said, "I don't think I can do this". He offered some calming words, I took a few deep breaths and decided to proceed. I could always terminate the dive, ascend and the boat would not be hard to get back to. I'm glad that I went! We saw two gray reef sharks on that dive that were probably about four feet long. They didn't come very close to us and I wish we had seen a dozen more. We also saw one moray eel but after seeing dozens of those during my 15 dives in Thailand, seeing it on the GBR wasn't as special. During the entire 36 minute dive we had red bass swimming with us. Apparently they are very lazy hunters and wanted to use our lights to find their dinner. Having them join us for the entire dive was kind of amusing. Most of our dives hovered around 10-15M with my max depth over the two days being 27.4 meters. I was surprised how well I managed my air consumption as I struggled with that in Thailand and Vietnam.
From what I've read post-trip, Milne Reef really is supposed to be one of the best there is on the GBR. The crew had such high hopes for what they expected to see and it makes me wonder if we just had bad luck. I wish more than anything that we had the budget to try another reef. We are already here and we have the time. But, with a day out costing an easy $500 for the two of us, we are going to save our funds and put it towards diving in Central and/or South America where we will do research ahead of time to make sure we hit the best dive spots. So far it looks like Honduras, Mexico, and Belize. I was hoping to get to Galapagos but so far it looks like the only options are seven night trips that would cost the two of us about $10,000. EEK!
You can see more of our photos from diving on the Great Barrier Reef here.
~ Jesslyn