We woke up early to go to the Marina for our scuba
diving trip with a charter boat called Poseidon. Destination: The Great Barrier Reef. There were about 60 of us, either discovery scuba divers, certified scuba divers, or snorkelers. Paul, Ross, Theresa, and I were discovery scuba diving with Herald, a Poseidon diver and marine biologist from Holland. First, we were fitted with the right mask, flippers, weight belt, BCD, tank, wet suit and stinger suit. The main concern out in the waters is not the sharks, but the jellyfish. The stinger suit made us look like the wiggles or members of blue man group. Even though the water was warm it was nice to have the added layer of the wet suit. 
Our first dive started out with a test. We had to show that we could 1) remove the regulator, exhale, and breathe again with the regulator, 2) remove water from our mask underwater, and 3) be able to remove the regulator and without looking, use only one arm to retrieve it. Once we all passed, it was on to the fun stuff. We didn't have to go too deep, about 10 meters, which was just enough to see everything at the reef. We saw many different types of fish, Angels, Clowns, Groupers, Snappers, Butterflys, Lions, Parrots, Triggers, and Cuttles. There were also Reef Sharks, Barracudas and Anenome. After the second dive, we were yelled at by Herald. Apparently, we were not staying close enough to him during the dive and his boss also scolded him for not keeping us together. I was a little slow because the flippers were chaffing my feet. We promised that it would not happen again.
We were then given lunch with bread, salad, pasta, sandwich meats, and shrimp. We were pretty hungry so of course we stuffed ourselves. Probably would have not done that if we had known we were going diving again just 10 minutes after eating. For the third dive, we all tried to stay close to Herald. So much so that we kept bumping into each other. I got the evil eye from Theresa when my hand knocked her on the mask twice. That was scarier than seeing more reef sharks at the bottom. Exhausted, we headed back to Port Douglas. It was nice to lay out on the boat deck and eat some snacks after a day of diving.
After taking a nap back at the hotel, we went to Paul and Janita's hotel for dinner where we had a couple pizzas delivered
along with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the local liquor shop. The "large" pizza is about the size of a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Not the size we're used to, but still good. Since Paul and Janita's room had a washer/dryer, we wanted to do as much laundry as we could before going to New Zealand. Afterwards, I topped off with two scoops of ice cream from Zinc, a nice restaurant down the road. The day at the Great Barrier Reef lived up to expectations and definitely something we would go back to do again but next time, we'd be certified.
For pictures of the day, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=bigtandeze&target=ALBUM&id=5407605307824396481&authkey=Gv1sRgCOvTo-acy8y4FQ&feat=email
Man I wish I could have gone diving. Looks awesome. I could have helped you name all the fishes. The blue little guys are blue damsels, small green ones are chromis, small black and white are damsels, the larger Black and white fish with a little yellow fins are seargent majors. The first pic when you said they were triggers, where actually Tangs also called surgeon fish. The blue dotted fish is a type of grouper. Majority of the big fish you saw where different type of groupers.
ReplyDeleteI'm so Jealous. Maybe one day we can go to the keys and dive!