Shark Bait

Just returned from four days and three nights aboard the atlantic clipper sailing the great barrier reef. I would say scuba diving here has definitely been the highlight of my trip so far - ridiculously beautiful surroundings, four dives a day, gently rocking hammocks to relax on, and a ridiculous party atmosphere with the staff once the diving is over.

Spent the first two days finishing the required dives for my open water certification (meaning I can be trusted to dive alone) and the next two doing some pleasure dives and some advanced dives for my advanced open water certificate. The great barrier reef was awesome, with so much life you just had to sit there and you'd realize there were thousands of fish and animals going about their lives in the 3 feet surrounding you. Saw tiny nemos (clownfish), manta rays, octopus, wierd invertebrates, and a rainforest of coral formations. My favorite coral has to be the ones that look exactly like the dancing trees in the background of super mario 3 - the mario trees that shift back and forth with the current.

Also saw cone shells, stonefish, and a variety of other pleasant things that can kill you, but decided to keep our distance. One of the best parts was doing two night dives, where you descend into the pitch darkness and either look at everything with a flashlight, or with the bioluminescence in the water... The reef totally changes after dark, with different animals taking over and fish changing colour, etc. Night is when the sharks come out to hunt as well, so the first night dive, when we descended to about 12 m of water and everyone in my group turned their flashlights off, i saw a pair of green eyes passing about 6 m away... When I put my flashlight on it, it revealed itself as a white-tip reef shark, relatively harmless to humans, but still 2 - 2.5 m long with pointy teeth. Once i noticed the first shark, i saw another set of eyes off to my left and found another shark.. this is when i started to get nervous and wonder how many sharks were actually down there...

Anyways, things turned out ok, then it was back to diving the next morning at 6:30 am, 9:30 am, and 3 pm. For our second night dive, we'd relocated to saxon reef, and as an added bonus, they decided to have a fish feed. The photos didn't turn out so well, but as this school of large (half metre long) fish was coming to the surface to get the food, about 5 grey whaler sharks (2.5 - 3 m long and very scary looking) started thrashing through the school and picking off fish with abandon... this is about 10 minutes before the second night dive, as we watch the sharks go into a feeding frenzy, literally right off the ladder we climb down to get into the water... to say i was a bit apprehensive is putting it mildly... anyways, by the time we were in the water, the sharks were full already, so they didn't bother us too much, but they were still circling till about 12:00 that night, keeping the school of fish herded into a circle so they could snack if they wanted to...

Anyways, running out of internet time, but there's more to tell, and some good photos, so I shall continue it at a later date... peace out y'all...