Great Barrier Reef

Lori and I just spent 3 days diving and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef and we had a fantastic time. We left early Sunday morning on a live aboard boat with 32 passengers and 6 crew for a 3 hour ride out to the reef. Most of the cabins have bunk beds, but we managed to snag one of the few cabins with a double bed. It wasn't the 5-star accommodation that Lori has grown accustomed to, but it was nice. Most of the other passengers were young adults who are backpacking around the world. Our time on board was spent diving, eating and sleeping.

It's been awhile since we've gone diving so I took a 2-day refresher course last week. Lori didn't have time to fit the refresher in, so she just snorkeled. The reef is truly spectacular. The only downside of our trip was the visibility under water wasn't great. Normally the visibility is really good, but we are in a period when the algae is blooming so there is a lot of algae in the water. Still, it was an amazing trip.

I guess I should give you some background on the reef itself. It's actually made up of 3,800 individual reefs and islands. It stretches from the southern coast of Papua New Guinea down the coast of Queensland for about 2,300kms. We had 11 dives planned over the 3 days, but I only managed to do 8. I went snorkeling with Lori once and the other times my legs were just too tired. Everything gets harder as you get older.

I bought a small underwater camera for the trip. I managed to get a few good shots, but I definitely need to improve my underwater photography skills. Here are some of the different corals we saw, including fan and staghorn coral among others. Just a side note, the deeper you go, the less colour you see. You lose red first, followed by orange, then yellow and so on.

Of course, we saw lots of sea life as well. In addition to thousands of fish we saw turtles, giant clams and stingrays.

I found Nemo, in case you were wondering.

And yes we saw sharks and barracudas, but they do not bother with people at all. Most of the sharks we saw were Grey Reef Sharks and they were about 5 feet long. I did a night dive while I was out and that's when most of the sharks showed up. The lights under the boat attract the smaller fish and the sharks come to feed on them. For those of us in the water, it was hard to see the sharks, but Lori stayed on the boat and she could see them swimming below us.

I shot some video as well. I apologize for the poor quality, it's a combination of poor visibility and poor skills on my part. I stitched a few together into a little movie.

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