Turtle Meets Kangaroo: 2013.03.28 Cairns: Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef

As a licensed diver, and somebody who has dove at any new opportunity possible, it was a major goal of mine to scuba dive the reef here while in Australia. Unfortunately it's not possible from Melbourne - the reef doesn't run that far south. But Cairns is a perfect place to dive the reef - it is located just an hour off the coast.

We had booked a trip with a company called Ocean Freedom, and the trip out to the reef didn't just include a dive. It also included hours of snorkeling nearby, shallower parts of the reef. In total, we were going to spend 9 hours out on the reef.

So at 7 am we made a short trip to the pier, where a boat was waiting for us.

And after a quick headcount we started the ride out to the reef. After the previous night's festivities, some of us were clearly feeling better than others.

Also, for anybody that is familiar with meme's (particularly the "soon" memes) I grabbed a photo of Justin that was just too perfect.

Anyway, the weather for the day started off cloudy with light showers, as usual. I actually thought the low clouds over the mountains surrounding Cairns looked really cool.

But we were lucky - the whether began clearing up right as we were approaching the dive site.

Tom and I were licensed so we were able to do a separate dive where we are given more freedom to dive around as we wish. We would be the first group in the water, so as we started getting right up to the dive site we went over standard orientations such as the way they like to indicate how much air is left in the tank, emergency signals, etc.

And before I knew it we were putting on our equipment. The water was so warm a wetsuit was not needed at all, but they did provide us stinger suits. Stinger suits are similar to wetsuits although they don't really help with heat, they simply cover your body to protect you from jellyfish.

And just a few minutes later we jumped into the water and descended down as a group. The dive was shallow - 10 to 15 meters. But out of all the dives I have been on, such as in Key West or Cancun, I have never seen so much awesome life. I had about 35-40 minutes of bottom time, and in that time I took any pics I could. I saw a sea turtle, sting ray, clown fish, barracuda, angel fish, and plenty of other fish. The sea turtle and sting ray were particularly amazing.

It was somewhat difficult while down there but here are some of my favorite pictures..

Above: Me

Above: Tom

Above: Sea turtle!

Above: Clownfish. I found Nemo and his dad.

After the dive was over, I climbed onto the boat and unloaded my gear. There were several groups going that day, and as I got out of the water more of my friends were just getting in.

Soon they were done diving too and we began heading to a second site for snorkeling. On the way lunch was provided, and Wilfrido and I ate ours on the top deck of the boat.

At the new snorkeling site there was a tiny, tiny island that we all made our way to and grabbed a group pic.

Above: 14 of the 17 fellow exchange students I went on the Cairns trip with. And me, of course.

The rest of the snorkeling was awesome as well! We saw a sting ray multiple times, a fish, and a few others spotted a shark (unfortunately I didn't). By the end of the day I was pretty sunburned (oops) and extremely tired... most of us fell asleep on the boat ride back to the pier.