After several days of travel, we finally made it to Cairns, Australia. Cairns (pronounced like "cans") is the departure point for most of the day trips and live-aboard cruises visiting the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Cairns is similar in appearance to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's a beach town that's liberally sprinkled with trinket shops and art deco architecture. In case you plan a trip to Cairns, be sure to visit the Daintree rainforest and other local sights. We didn't realize how much there is to do near Cairns and didn't leave enough time to sight see. We just stayed overnight and then were transported to the airport first thing in the morning to take a short flight to Lizard Island. By 10 am we were settled for our 4 night dive trip to the Coral Sea on the ship Spirit of Freedom. The GBR is a massive structure that is subdivided into many smaller reefs, and the Coral Sea is one specific region. I have posted an internet-acquired map from the Spirit of Freedom website for reference.
Boarding the ship.
I have no idea what kind of boat it is. The ship departs from Lizard Island, visits several locations along the Ribbon Reefs, steams over 110 miles out to Osprey Reef, and then ends in Cairns. The itinerary calls for 13 dives in 4 days, which is a very rigorous schedule for those of you who aren't divers. Most people skipped a few dives to avoid getting exhausted. It doesn't seem like a lot until you consider that 5 dives in one day requires you to do both a dawn and night dive, and be swimming for a total of 5+ hours, often into a current. Also I should mention that divers are expected to enter and exit the water in heavy surge. This amount of exercise has the benefit of torching calories, so the ship's crew fed us after every dive. They explained our schedule by saying that if you just dove, it's time to eat, and if you just ate, it's time to dive. The activity organizer, Joel, called out " dive time" so many times that Scott and I are still hearing it in our sleep.
(view of Lizard Island)
As for the diving itself, I enjoyed the Ribbon Reef diving the best. The scenery here consisted of both wall and reef dives, and the coral formations and fish abundance were spectacular. This is the quality of diving I had been expecting and I was not disappointed by the GBR at all. Scott and I had heard that the reefs within day trip distance of Cairns had all been destroyed by overuse, and that live aboard cruises were the only way to see intact reef. I can't comment on the state of the reef near Cairns, but it is certainly true that the outer fringes of the Coral Sea contain beautiful, undisturbed reefs. It is well worth the sea voyage necessary to reach this portion of the GBR, and I am very glad that there are still some parts that haven't been destroyed. The dive ship companies, now conscious of the damage that can be done to the reef by inattentive divers, provide instruction and reminders about protecting the coral.
For those of you who are fellow divers: I wouldn't recommend the GBR for inexperienced divers. Not that it's impossible for a beginner, but some of the dives were very technical. Most all dives had current to deal with, and several days there were big swells that tend to knock you into the boat. The descents were sometimes through low visibility open water. I am very proud of Scott for handling the conditions so well. I would have had a difficult time had I been on this trip at his experience level.
(Dining Room)
(Resting between dives)
I'll end this blog by telling you about our long steam out from the Ribbon Reefs to Osprey Reef, and the rest of the trip will be in the next blog. The crossing involves a 10 hour jog across open ocean, because Osprey Reef is a sunken island quite a distance outside the outer portion of the GBR. The skipper informed us that we would be experiencing 4 meter seas during the crossing, which he described as "bouncy." Scott gets sea sick, so he was a bit apprehensive. Every time the boat hit a wave and tilted to the side we would slide across the bed first in one direction and then the other as the boat righted itself. It was kinda fun until midnight, when we really wanted to get some sleep. Fortunately, neither of us got sick, but we didn't fall asleep until 6 am, just in time to wake up to a chorus of "dive time" at 7. - Anna
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