Pro Dive Liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef: Day 3

By Bobbi-Jo // 19 May 2010 // Comments: 0 // Related Categories: adventure, Best Backpacker Job, Scuba, shark, Things to do

5:25am Twenty minutes left to sleep before we need to be up to zombie our way through the first briefing of the day. Kill me.

5:45am Softly munching on an apple isn’t doing anything to kick start my brain function. I can tell I’ll need to actually get into the water to reach 100%.

6:30am Splash down. We’re still at Gordon’s Mooring, it’s our last dive at this site. I still don’t regret not going on the night dive, I don’t feel as though I missed much. We’re told it’s best to snorkel out a few minutes until we reach the reef, then to descend. About a minute into the snorkel I’m stung by something. Great. I’ve made it this far in Australia with my most serious injuries being limited to a kayak-related head injury and bites by two birds: a parrot and a magpie. The last thing I want is to get stung by a jellyfish in the Land of Deadly Jellyfish. I figure if I’m going to die I might as well donate my body to the reef, so I decide to continue with the dive instead of swim back to the boat. I’m glad I stayed. It’s a beautiful dive and we’re exploring a part of the reef we didn’t see yesterday.

7:00am Shark!

7:15am Panic. Instead of going down as buddies, the other Bobbi and I pick up a stray diver before we get into the water and go as a threesome. This works out fine until we’re  headed back to the boat, I’m running fairly low on air and we realize we’ve lost track of our #3. Or should I say, he swam on back to the boat without us. Only we didn’t discover that he was safe and already changed out of his wetsuit until after six terrifying minutes of looking for him in the open sea. No es bueno.

7:25am Breakfast is better than usual, probably because I’m hungrier than usual. With seven dives in the last two days, I’ve definitely worked up an appetite. It’s going to be weird getting back to the mainland later today. Doing nothing but diving, having good conversation, sleeping and eating is something I can get used to.

9:00am It’s time for my last dive before I gain my Advanced Certification. It’s the Naturalist Dive, which means that I need to identify a few things in the water: three vertebrae, three invertebrate, and two different types of coral. I figure that of all of the things in the ocean, I must be able to pick out at least eight, so I hop in ready, camera in hand so that I can assemble somewhat of a cheat sheet, and we’re off. The dive site is Tracey’s Bommie. We’re told that there are two relatively large families of Nemo fish in the area. Nemo fish is actually what dive instructors and supervisors in Australia, and who knows where else, have taken to calling clown fish. It’s cute, yes, but it leaves me wondering what they called them before. Or if they even pointed divers in their direction. Were Nemo fish special before there was a Nemo?
 
9:45am Back on  board and hopefully with a few better pictures to show for it than last time. Not much stands out about the dive other than the fact that it was beautiful. I guess that means I’m becoming much more comfortable with diving itself. Achieving the correct buoyancy and maintaining control of where I’m swimming at all times has become second nature.

11:00am Because we have to be back in Cairns for 3:30pm, our surface intervals this last day are pretty short. If I had to choose, I’d probably have preferred the dives closer together on the first day, leaving the last for a looser schedule. I know I also probably feel this way because three days doesn’t feel like enough, but back in the water we go.

11:30am Okay, maybe we don’t need more time on the reef. We spend the last 20 or so minutes of our dive doing backflips, handstands, and push-ups on the ocean floor. We weren’t bored per se, but we had just dived this site not even two hours before, so we had pretty much run out of fish to chase.

12:15pm As I’m laying on deck and the boat begins to move, I notice that we’re not alone. I almost wish I could swim to the boats carrying day-passengers that are moored nearby and tell them that one day isn’t enough. Three days isn’t enough. A few months ago I wouldn’t have ever thought I’d be strapping on a SCUBA tank, much less going on a 10-dive binge on the Great Barrier Reef. This trip is kicking off the countdown to the end of The Best Backpacking Job, but definitely the beginning of a lifetime of diving.

3:30pm Being back on dry land is a little bittersweet. The entire world isn’t rocking back and forth, which is a plus, but we’re leaving behind some awesome new friends and an incredible experience. Pictures and the memories we try to hold on to can’t really do the trip justice, but they’re a good start.

*All pictures that look too good to have been shot by me (everything but the thumbnail) provided by Pro Dive Cairns.

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Many special thanks to Pro Dive Cairns for taking us out to the reef and showing us such a great time and to VIP Backpackers for being our gracious hosts throughout this trip!