Dive The Great Barrier Reef

Scuba diving is a passion of mine. I first learned how to dive when I was about eighteen. Then life took me in other directions and I didn't dive for many years. Back in the early 90's, I recertified and diving became a major part of our lives. One of the first places I wanted to go was The Great Barrier Reef. Every recreational diver dreams about dropping down onto the reef of reefs looking for undersea life of every form. Ands so it was that this item was ticked off my list.

Divers are a gregarious lot. During our diving travels, we made friends with many scuba enthusiasts. We bonded particularly well with one group on a liveaboard dive trip to the Netherlands Antilles. As that trip came to an end, we all found ourselves hoping we could meet again in another diving location in a year or so. The idea of diving The Great Barrier Reef was put forth, and all quickly agreed it was a splendid destination. We challenged Sasha, our trip organizer, to outdo himself by getting us all together again in that distant location. He did a yeoman's job and delivered us The Nimrod Explorer, a 72-foot steel and aluminum liveaboard diving boat.

So, on a sunny day in April we all found orselves gathered at the airport in Cairns, Australia loading our gear aboard two small planes bound for Lizzard Island, where we were to rendezvous with our floating home for the next ten days.

Scuba diving is a lot of fun no matter where you do it. But, if you're at one of the world's premier diving spots with a group of diving buddies that are all focused on having a great time both under and on the surface, you have a recipe for a lot of fun. And we all did have an incredible experience.
The warming of the oceans has a profound effect on corals. So, if one is diving on the largest assemblage of coral in the world, you are bound to see the effects of warming. That we did.

While every aspect of our diving experience could only be described using superlatives, there is one aspect of diving that many friends ask me about continually. That is about diving with sharks. We certainly dived with our share of sharks on this expedition. To be sure, they were not the great whites. But, many people wonder about diving with any sharks at all. Considering the the profligation of nature programs on TV that extoll the fearsomeness of sharks, it's not a wonder that people think we divers must be out of our skulls when we hang out with them.

First of all, sharks have an extraordinary sense of smell. But the bad news is they can't see nearly as well as they can smell. So, when we hear of a luckless surfer being munched on by a shark, it's usually because the surfer kind of looked like one of the shark's favorite snacks, a turtle, floating on the surface. When sharks do bite a surfer, that's what they do - they bite it. You rarely hear of a shark eating a surfer because once the shark tastes what he thought was going to be a yummy morsel of turtle (or something else equally tasty) and it turns out to be a bony human, the shark usually lets go. The problem is even a nip by a shark can be a really bad life threatening experience for a human.

These pictures taken during our GBR oddysey show some of the sharks we encountered. Although the picture below was a close enough encounter for me, the skipper of the Nimrod just had to demonstrate how snuggly a small shark could be (NOT!!).

Diving with sharks actually gives me a great deal more comfort than swimming on the surface wondering if one is lurking below me. And, when diving with them, they treat divers just like any other denizen of the depths. They exhibit curiosity and do come in close for a look sometimes, but not normally. And, as I said, these guys were not the ferocious carnivores that would have sent us scurrying for the boat.

On this trip we did venture out into the Coral Sea to a place named Osprey Reef. It was one of the highlights of the trip. During our dives out there at places with names like Nobby's Wall, C.C., North Horn, and Half Way Wall, we often found sharks coming in to check us out.