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Great Barrier Reef

Flew over to Cairns and took a scuba diving trip out on the Great Barrier Reef after getting certified when I was living in Melbourne. We did 7 dives over the course of the trip, including a night dive which was verrrry cool.

From the plane, you can see how the living reefs stretch out and color the ocean floor.

We took one boat out to the reef, and slept on another boat that was attached to a mooring right on the edge of one of the reefs. The boat would change moorings each day to provide us new spots to dive. Wherever we ended up, they would draw a map of the reef on a chalkboard with depths and any other info.

The boat we were on actually had maybe 20-25 people on it. But there were only 6 or 8 of us who were certified, so at dive time they would let us suit up, jump in and wander off before anyone else got into the water. Some people were taking scuba courses on the boat. I kind of wish I would have taken that route...Melbourne's water was cold and rough.

We were able to get pretty close to a sea turtle (that's me in the photo!), and there was this other massive guy swimming about 2 feet behind me and it took my buddy Ben pointing frantically before I turned around. He was a little smaller than me and didn't mind being touched. In fact, we think he liked the attention.

The guys in the nighttime photo are the dive masters who took us on the night dive. There were a bunch of sharks swimming around the lights on the bottom of the boat. We took flashlights and jumped in with one of the dive masters, who helped us find our way around. It was so strange being underwater in complete darkness, but it was warm and with the flashlights, you really could see a lot. We saw a lot of different marine life that we hadn't during the day. Very cool stuff.