November 29 Great Barrier Reef

Soon after we checked in at Diving Cairns, we loaded up into a van that brought us to the dock. From there we boarded a boat for a speedy trip to our ship. As we boarded, we were told to take off our shoes and leave them off for the remainder of the time until we set foot on land again. I don’t know about the rest of the group, but the thought of athlete’s foot and fungus immediately came to mind as I set my bare foot on the wet carpet that lined the inside of the boat. After a few steps, feeling the wetness oozing between my toes, I almost regretted coming. But it was too late, we started moving and soon the shore was nowhere in sight.

Soon we came upon the Kangaroo, a much larger ship where we will be spending our next few days. We grabbed our bags and climbed on board. From there we were given the welcoming talk, safety talk, food talk, and schedule talk. So much was going on. After orientation, we went into the main cabin for lunch. The cabin was carpeted, and wet. Eck, I quickly grabbed my portion of pasta and salad so I could sit down and take my feed off that icky floor. I don’t think I’m being too anal; surely no one else enjoys cold, wet, sticky carpet right? After lunch, we were told to get upstairs for our first snorkeling/diving briefing. Jae and I along with two other guys are the only ones snorkeling, everyone else had signed up to get a diving certificate. After the briefing, we went to the lower level to get geared up, meaning squirming into our jelly suits, which are essentially loose fitting lycra jumpsuits that keeps you from turning into a human jellyfish stinger-cushin, putting on our flippers, spitting into our goggles to keep it from fogging up and jumping into the water.

Now, I’ve snorkeled a few times, Hawaii, Caribbeans and my own backyard, the Pacific off the coast of San Diego, and it is never easy. First is the fact of stepping off of something solid and into water that is sometimes 4 feet drop away. Many times, as I stand on the edge of the boat, I briefly wonder, what if I trip on those big flippers and end up falling flat into the water, would that hurt? Second, no matter how warm I believe the water is, I’m always hesitant about voluntarily subjecting myself to such temperature shock. Most times, the water is usually colder than I anticipated, so I suppose that fear is quite valid. My third reason is my dislike of sinking completely into the water, which happens when you step off a boat a few feet up. With all these issues, it’s a wonder I jump at all. Usually, what gets me jumping is the pressure that there are others in line waiting to jump.

All too quick, before I could talk myself out of the first dive, I was standing at the edge of the jumping area. Holding on to my snorkel so that it doesn’t fall off when I hit water, I take one big step forward and into the Great Barrier Reef.

The water was, cool, not too cold, not quite warm. The moment I resurfaced, I took off swimming away from the boat so that other people can jump. Since everyone else had air tanks on, I certaintly don’t want to get hit by by any of them. I looked around for Jae and we took off to the spots where we were told had good marine activity. As we swam to the more shallow spots, the temperature in the water became noticably warm. It’s a strange feeling to swim from a cool area into a warm stream. If you don’t move, you can feel the warm stream flow away. Since I like the warmness, I followed the warm current whereever it went.

The sight underwater is by far the most spectacular that I’ve ever seen. I know that the Great Barrier Reef is famous for it’s beauty, but it is truly best appreciated in real life. There is so much life and colors all around, a true underwater garden. I felt like a minature human swimming in one of those massive saltwater aquariums that CEO’s keep in their offices. What’s truly awesome is when I stuck my ears underwater, I could hear the parrotfish grazing…Parrotfish are these large, rainbow colored fish with big teeth used to find algae on corals. Chomp, chomp, grind, grind, the sounds are actually quite loud. If you watch a large parrotfish, you can actually hear each bite it takes.

We spent almost 2 hours in the water, looking, pointing and trying to take pictures with our digital camera in it’s newly purchased underwater case. I left most of the picture taking to Jae since I couldn’t see the LCD very well due to glare. I don’t know how he manages to get nice pictures, mine tend to be of a fleeing fish’s tail, or part of a coral.

On our second, or was it third dive of the day, we had the most exciting sighting of all, sea turtles!! Dolphins, whales, seals, or sea turtles, I think people always get excited about seeing another air breather among all the ‘water’ breathers in the ocean. It make you feel like one of them, a natural ocean swimmer (as natural as you can get with a jellysuit, flippers, snorkel and life vest).

Yes, back to the sea turtles. We’ve seen sea turtles before, in Maui, we saw one deep in the water, swimming as fast as it could away from us the moment our group saw it. In the Carribbean, a group of sea turtles approached our boat after we were heading back toward shore, curious and wondering if we were going to throw food. But, oh, But This Time, instead of far away or deep in the water, the sea turtle was in the shallow part of the reef, no more than 10 feet away from us! A beautiful green turtle that was about 2 feet wide and 3 feet long. I’m sure it was aware of us, but it paid us no attention as it swam lazily around. Naturally, we followed it, Jae snapping as many pictures as he could. I tried to stay behind the turtle incase it thought I was a threat. Soon, our turtle was joined by another turtle! What a treat this was. For sure the scuba divers were not seeing this. The’re spending most of the time in the flat sandy bottom, learning sign languages, how to breathe, and how to call for help. I thought it was a waste of a trip to the Barrier reef if all you do is learn the basics of how to scuba safely rather than actually out seeing stuff.

We spent about 10 minutes or so with the turtles before they finally got tired of us following them around like the papparazi and swam away in search of food. A bit sad about the end of our encounter, we went back to the boat.

After our last dive, we went back to our rooms to shower. We were told that we should take one shower no longer than 3 minutes per day to conserve the hot water. The boat uses a desailantion system that pumps water from the ocean and desalts them. Yea, unsalted fish pee shower. What’s funny (now), gross (then) is that the water was actually kinda yellow….I discovered this fact when I was soaking our goggles to remove any salt residues. Initially when the water is running, it looks pretty clear, but once it starts to build up in the sink, the color of the water, even in the dim lighting was distinctively yellow…talk about golden showers. No matter, the water was hot and I enjoyed every second of the 180 second shower I got.

After a dinner of pasta and mushrooms, we went to sleep on our 4 inch thick mattress in our way too small cabin feeling slightly grimy still.