The Great Barrier Reef

Although it has been nearly ten years since Kevin and I last SCUBAed, we knew we had to take the opportunity to dive the Great Barrier Reef on this trip. 

We booked a three-night live aboard room on the Reef Encounter. The dive boat is uniquely set up like a floating hotel right at the reef (which is about 35 miles offshore from Cairns), and a second smaller boat ferries you from Cairns marina. It’s a 90 minute trip just to get to the reef. Here we are waiting to board the shuttle boat, Reef Experience.

Once aboard, we were shown to our stateroom. The stateroom was a decent size, certainly big enough for two people for three nights. It felt pretty spacious but there wasn't a huge amount of storage so we were glad we had just packed small backpacks and left our larger luggage back at our hotel in Cairns. At least we had an amazing view out our window!

After getting settled in, a divemaster described how the diving works aboard the vessel. They do five daily water sessions a day for about an hour each time, and you can choose to SCUBA or just snorkel, or a combination of both. For safety you are allowed a maximum of three dives during the daytime sessions. Plus, if you are interested you can join the night dive session, for a total of four dives max per day. Night dives are always the shallowest dives of the day and they give everyone an underwater torch so that the safety lookout crew can see you from the boat deck. The lights have an eerie glow as the divers make their way around the reef, looking for fish like sharks and rays that are more active at night.

It had been awhile since our last dive so we started off with a refresher dive with an instructor to go over all the basics and reassure ourselves that we could dive safely. That session went really well and we were more confident to do some dives with a guide and even on our own, as a buddy team. 

We saw so much marine life, and the coral was so colorful and healthy!

I should mention that most of the photos in this post were taken by Jesse and Paula from the Scubabo professional photography team. They allow you to purchase the photos at the end of the trip. Which was great, since our sunset selfies never turn out quite as good as this shot from the first evening on deck:

Or this one, taken just before the night dive. I joked to Kevin that I think we might actually look better in this photo than in some of our wedding photos!

We did see small reef sharks (about 3 or 4 feet long) but they never sit still to have their picture taken! The slower-moving species were easier to track, like these sea turtles.

It was even easier to spot the giant clams, since they helpfully stay put in one place. We saw some huge ones, up to 5 feet across.

It was so relaxing to watch the big slow-moving schools of fish just float by. These guys have the funny name of "Sweetlips".

When we weren't diving, we were sure to get in the water to snorkel, too. In fact, I found that the snorkeling at some sites we went to was even better than the diving. 

So much of the reef is only a meter or two deep, so you can still really see all the vibrant neon hues of the coral and observe the tiny fish going about their tiny fishy daily lives.

In fact, the reef is so shallow that you can tell where it is from the boat -- you can see behind Kevin that the water takes on lighter hues as it gets shallower, until you see brownish gold patches of reef and then a line of dark blue in the distance as the water gets deeper again on the far side of the reef.

We are back on land again, but we had such a wonderful time on our first liveaboard dive trip. We made some new friends among our fellow passengers, and the diving instructors/guides were fantastic. This was definitely the highlight of our Australia trip; we managed to save the best for last!