Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

7am pick up for our 2 day/ 1 night live aboard dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. The first impressions were much better than our last expericnces on the boat in the Whitsundays. The boat was big, new and clean and the guys were super proffesional! Our first 2 dives of the day were aboard the day boat before we tranferred to the live aboard boat later in the afternoon. The "Cher-Suits" caused much amusement amongst the dive masters and instructors and we soon aquired the title of the ninja-divers....I must admit though that I much preferred being refered to as a Ninja rather than a rather scary looking Male Cher impersonator.

As you would expect if diving up here the water was absolutley crystal clear with visibility of upto 30m...incredible. We were in fact really lucky with the weather and conditions were perfect. We actually dived a number of different sites around the Norman reef and saw some pretty cool stuff including Blue spotted Stingrays, Moray Eels, Loads of Parrot Fish, Anemones, Sea Cucumbers, White Tip Reef Sharks, Trigger Fish and of course some pretty nice Corals too.....

Included in the dive package price were 6 day dives and 1 night dive. Nora and I were both a bit nervous about the night dive but the fact that we hadn't dived at night before meant that we were required to take a guide. So along with about another 6 or 7 divers we piled into the black night waters following our guide. But to be honest as soon as we decended it was clear that it was going to be chaos. It was dark, very dark (it was afterall night time) and everyone was clearly panicking. As we all struggled to stay as close as possible to the guide people were kicked, stood on, bashed against the coral. If that wasn't bad enough the sight of 4 or more rather grim looking grey reef sharks circling for prey below us certianly didn't help. I think we were all very happy when that dive ended! Sitting on deck after the dive you could look down and see the smaller fish, which were attracted by the ships flood lights, being stalked by the bigger fish which in turn were being stalked by the sharks. Pretty cool thing to see....when you're out of the water!!

The next day we made 2 more dives before being transferred to the day boat and making our way back to Cairns.