Glub, Glub

Day 10:
Today was the day that I finally got to see the focus of my Australian Holiday. Today was the day I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef for the first time.

It started with a very early morning (I’m wondering when I’ll get a late morning…) to catch a coach up to Port Douglas. Port Douglas is a small resort town about 90 minutes north of Cairns that mainly exists as a launching point for dive charters to the far north.

The dive charter I was on was called the SilverSonic and had about 60 people (40 divers) on it. The best diving on the Great Barrier Reef is on the outer reef and it took us about 90 minutes to get out there while traveling about 75 kilometers. Along the way the very professional staff got everyone geared up and ready to go.

We did three dives on three different sites during the day and I had quite a good time. One of the things that stood out for me was the coral. In Florida, even down in the Keys, the coral is small and sparse. It’s bleaching out quite badly and is generally in bad shape. Here on the Great Barrier Reef though, it’s amazingly alive. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. On the first dive, it was all soft corals, on the second dive it was all hard corals and the third dive was a combination of both.

The thing that disappointed me though, were the fish. When you see all of this coral and all of its brilliant colors, it’s easy to think that Florida diving can’t compare. But for some reason, there were almost no schooling fish anywhere on the reef. In Florida, even on the worst dives, you’d expect to see schools of fish in the hundreds. Heck, even on the Fish Rock Cave dive I saw schools in the thousands. But on these three dives, the divemasters acted like we were seeing a lot of fish, and we weren’t.

I’m sad to say that unless the live aboard dive boats see something completely different, I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing a whole vacation around the Great Barrier Reef. Now, don’t get me wrong, if you’re in Australia you’d be an idiot not to go dive or snorkel it (it’s incredibly easy to dive the Great Barrier Reef if you’re not certified) and I would certainly do it again. I just have to say that it’s not as live as you think it is.

Jill Update:
Another good day for Jill, apparently because we had separate vacations again. Laying poolside all day does good things for us.