If you are someone who likes the open water, warm sunshine and aspire to swim with the fish amidst the most beautiful underwater scenery, then the Great Barrier Reef will feature in your list of places to do that at. The GBR (No, not Gourmet Burger Kitchen – that is GBK) is one of Australia's most remarkable natural gifts. As the guidebooks will tell you – ‘The Great Barrier Ree
f is blessed with the breathtaking beauty of the world's largest coral reef. The reef contains an abundance of marine life and comprises of over 3000 individual reef systems and coral cays and literally hundreds of picturesque tropical islands with some of the world’s most beautiful sun-soaked, golden beaches’. It is one of the seven wonders of the natural world and flying in from Brisbane to Cairns and viewing it from a greater distance, I kind of understood why. It is larger than the Great Wall of China and probably the only living colony on earth visible from space. The silver sands and the turquoise waters which looked startlingly clear from the height were just breathtaking.After months of planning and organising, we had managed to pull together a dream holiday for the family – 4 weeks touring the East Coast of Australia and the South Island of New Zealand (hereafter referred to as the ‘ECOZ & SINZ’ project). This was one our best planned holidays and we had all the details sorted out – from Brisbane to Cairns to Christchurch to the rest of SINZ to Sydney to the Gold Coast and finally back to Brisbane – we knew exactly how we were moving from one to the other, where we were staying, where we were eating – everything! Except one – which dive centre that I would go diving with. Now, don’t get me wrong – I did a phenomenal amount of research on the internet and asking friends – but there was just too much choice and not much between them to choose from. So we decided to pick one when we got to Cairns – and that was not much easier.
'If you only visit the Great Barrier Reef once, you will want to see it at its best!’, screamed the banner outside the ‘Reef Magic Cruises’ shop at the Cairns Pier. We sort of agreed with the sentiment, so decided to give it a shot. Reef Magic have an all-weather platform (a pontoon by Marine World) out on the reef, which caters for all activity levels - Snorkelling in the sheltered coral lagoon (that had Sudha & Arjun (12) excited and Agustya (4) ecstatic!), go scuba diving (this is what I was here for), go on a Guided Snorkel safari with their Marine Biologist who would feed the fish (we all wanted to do that), go for a spin around the outer reef in their semi-submersible (we all wanted to do that). I had signed up for 2 introductory dives, which ruled out any of the other activities other than the guided safari for me – but Sudha and the boys signed up for everything. Arjun was gutted when we discovered that their minimum age for scuba diving was 13 – which led me to promise him that I would take him diving when he was 13 (another well-earned pretext for me to go diving again!) – but more on that later.
We started fairly early in the morning to take the Catamaran, that would take us out to the pontoon and once in the pontoon, we got sized up and kitted out. Agustya got this lovely lycra full body suit made to look like a clown fish (one again – thanks Nemo!) and Arjun got a bright red full body lycra suit, making him look like a jelly-bear. Sudha and the boys got ready to snorkel, whilst I got my diving gear on.
My dives had to be ‘introductory’ again, because the ‘Discover SCUBA’ course I had done earlier did not really count as diving experience. However, this experience was a bit different – because there were 2 other new divers in my group and we shared a single instructor – Emma (who was from New Zealand, but was living in Cairns at the time). Emma took the 3 of us through the basic training and skills and we spend about 10 minutes in confined water – which was a huge submerged cage under the pontoon. Even when we were in this cage – the number of fish that surrounded us was simply astounding. I later realised that the staff feed the fish from this cage, which ensures that during the Safari, there are plenty of fish to see. This obviously had the fortunate result of the fish expecting to be fed, everytime anyone descended into the cage and they came swarming in numbers. I was only too glad that no one had let the sharks in on that secret yet.
Emma soon realised that I probably did not need as much attention from her as the other two – who were diving for the first time and told me so. Once Emma was sure that we would be OK underwater and that she could manage the group, we left the cage to move into the open water – two by two: Emma was holding the hand of the older new diver, whilst I was holding hands with a young newbie from Austria. The Austrian was a confident swimmer, though and I was sure that he could handle himself underwater. We swam closely behind Emma, who kept turning around every minute to make sure we were OK.As soon as we moved a bit further away from the pontoon, the fish became scarcer, but the corals came into focus. There were some really resplendent colours in there – but I must admit these were few and far between to what I was expecting. Given what I had heard about the GBR – I was expecting to be immersed in a plethora of colour, but instead most of the corals I saw were shades of grey, green and brown. Concluding that that these were dead coral colonies, I began to wonder about the cost of human interaction that these corals had to suffer.
Surely having a semi-permanent platform on this site with millions of tourists, swimming through, touching, breaking and hurting these corals could not be good and this was supposed to be the best preserved coral reef in the world. The amazing variety of fish there though immediately came to lift my spirits again. We then descended to a part of the reef which had a sandy bottom and here, Emma pulled out a bottle with some fish food in it and squeezed some of it out. In seconds, we were surrounded by small fish. Shortly after, a majestic Wrasse called Wally came our way, having smelt the food. The smaller fish respectfully cleared the way for Wally. Wally must clearly be used to human contact, as he was quite comfo
rtable with us holding him and playing with him while sucked up the food from the water. Once the food was finished, he did not wait around for pleasantries – after all there could be other food bottles being squeezed somewhere else! I had rented a really high quality camera from the dive centre and managed to get some really cool pictures. Emma was quite happy to click pictures of me as well. I managed to get a classic picture of a clown fish rubbing itself against an anemone.The older newbie with Emma decided after the first dive, that he had enough and could not cope with the second dive. Although I did not notice it during the first dive, he must have been very uncomfortable. He emerged from the water looking completely exhausted and scared and I was thinking, Emma must have had a really hard time with him. The second dive was a lot more comfortable – it was now just the three of us and we all swam on our own remaining close to each other. This time around Emma was able to take us a bit deeper to around 15 m and we saw some different fish to what we had seen earlier. Although looking down from 15m, I noticed that the corals below that depth also did not look particularly colourful or thriving. My concern for the well being of these corals and the cost of human interaction re-surfaced – I was to learn a lot more about corals shortly. Whilst I saw millions of fish, some of the different fish I saw here were – a large cuttlefish (I thought it was a giant squid), a bumphead parrot fish, a batfish, trevallies, a school of sweetlips, giant clams etc.
When we came out of the water, I had three things on my mind:
• the concern around the state of corals,
• my diving skills – I seemed to have a lot of trouble maintaining my depth (I would keep finding myself a lot higher than Emma or a lot lower than her – whilst consciously trying to maintain the same depth as her – something was wrong here!) and seemed to be consuming a lot more air than I did at Havelock Island (again, something was wrong here).
• I seemed to have done something to my lower back and was concerned if it was the 'bends'.
Fortunately for me, Emma was able to provide an explanation for all three. The colour of the corals, she said depended on the algae in the local area – which is what corals survive on, and the brown, green and grey corals are what are dominant in the GBR. She even guessed that I must have dived before in either the Red sea, Mediterranean sea or the Indian Ocean and that is why I was a bit disappointed. Moreover, corals only thrive in shallow water, where they are submerged in water, but also have plenty of sunlight – therefore between 5 to 20 m depth – which is why I did not see many corals at lower depths.
On the second, she said that what I was struggling with was quite common and is a skill called neutral buoyancy, that one trains at achieving. It involved knowing how your body behaves underwater, how many weights one needs to cancel the body’s positive buoyancy, the impact of breathing and how to control it to maintain neutral buoyancy. As a result, the effort I put in to maintain my depth, coupled with all the other unnecessary movements I was doing underwater had the result of consuming much more air.
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Finally, she told me that what I had could not be the 'bends', as we had not been under water for long enough or deep enough and it seemed like something more muscular – probably brought on by the way I had the weights on my belt and the resulting way in which I was moving in the water.
After my two dives, feeling exhausted and charged up, feeling content and excited, feeling fulfilled and depleted – I made my way to rejoin my family just in time for the Guided Snorkel safari. I learnt that whilst Arjun, who is quite a strong swimmer – was absolutely enjoying himself; Agustya was quite apprehensive about going out to swim in the open seas, having only swam in small pools before and also harboured a few other fears – fresh from ‘Finding Nemo’. As a result, Sudha ended up with Agustya either on the diving platform or in the semi-submersible – which she assures me was a good experience. So I took Agustya under my wing (literally!) and swam holding him into the open water. Agustya after some initial worried moments quickly settled down, reassured by my arm around him and took to breathing through his snorkel and watching the marine life below the waters. In couple of minutes, he was swimming on his own, moving to different areas to get a better view of the fish. Sudha too was snorkelling around and having a great time and Arjun managed to get quite a few pictures of us.
We must have spent a good couple of hours snorkelling and exploring the area, when it was time to head back. After a quick shower and change, we settled on the sun deck of the catamaran – headed back to Cairns, with the sea-breeze blowing on our faces, a refreshing drink in our hands and my thoughts on where and when my next diving experience would be...
For more images of our water escapades at the GBR, check out - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=137246&id=704152886&l=44f097da71
Next Stop: Sharm El Sheikh, Red Sea, Egypt
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