Thursday, December 25, 2014

Cairns, Australia

I am in Cairns to do a 4 day, 3 night live-aboard with Deep Sea Divers. We boarded Sea Quest, a transfer boat, in the Cairns harbour-
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and after 90 minutes we were diving at Plato.
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My second and third dives were in the Norman Reef at Turtle Bay and Sandra's.
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I also did a night dive at Sandra's. I had a high powered torch and saw lots of eyes, sharks and Giant Trevally. The G.Ts are fun because you can watch them eat other fish If you shine your light on smaller fish, they can see them and 'chomp'!
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I didn't really enjoy the night dive so I'm not doing anymore for the time being.
Today I did 5 dives! Diving was a pretty cool way to spend Christmas!
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Instead of turkey for supper, we had fish and prawns!
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Day 2 on the Great Barrier Reef found us still at Sandra's in the Norman Reef.
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The dive schedule started early with a 6:00 orientation, then a 6:30-7:30 dive. Breakfast was from 8:00-9:00, then Dive 2 from 9:00-10:00, Dive 3 from 11:00-12:00, lunch at 12:30 and then we finally get a break! You would think we were at work or something! Sea Quest arrives with transfers so Dive 4 isn't until 2:30-3:30. Dive 5, the night dive, is after supper from 7:30 - 8:30.
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After the first dive, the rest of the day was at Saxon's Reef diving Coral Gardens.
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Lots of divers have GoPros so it is thanks to them for these pictures. They really don't do justice to what we see. It's a million times more beautiful! Today I did 4 dives!
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Day 3 started out back at Norman's Reef, but this time diving Nora. Dive 2 and 3 were also at Norman's but this time at Caves. I felt very dizzy this afternoon so that's all the diviing I did today. I think it was because after Dive 1, when we surfaced, we were a long, long way from the boat, so the swim took a lot out of me.
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Day 4 we moved again, still at Norman's Reef but diving Playground and Troppos. For my second dive, I went in a dinghy, hoping to find a strong current for a drift dive, but unfortunately once we descended, there was little to no current so it was just a 'normal' dive!
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This is a typical dive site map.  We always had a briefing before a dive and for $15 we could go with a guide.  I just tagged along with an experienced diver who had a way better sense of direction under water than me!
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The equipment  was well organized and maintained-
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Thanks to Shelley Canham for the following pictures.  I actually saw ALL of this!  Too cool!
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Sharks-
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A purple anemone, where Nemo hangs out-
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Turtles!
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These sea sponges lay everywhere-
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A stingray-
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When you wave your hand over this, these things disappear into the coral-
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A clam that also closes when agitated-
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Soft coral-
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An eel-
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I enjoyed my experience on the live-aboard. It's a really good chance to do lots of diving and the crew was excellent. One thing I might do if I came back was to be a 'hostie'. They work on the boat and get 2 dives/day for free! That might be something to do for a few days!

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