Our Great Barrier Reef Experience

We spent the last week completing our PADI open water diving courses with a company called Deep Sea Divers Den here in Cairns. The first two days were a little mundane as we had lots of boring theory to learn and skills to practice in the pool.

After that was over we were picked up bright and early to head out onto the Great Barrier Reef where we spent the next three days living on a boat called Ocean Quest. We spent the majority of our time diving at Norman's reef with our instructor, practising the skills that we had learnt in the pool and looking at the reef (searching for Nemos).

On board Ocean Quest we completed 6 dives before we became certified scuba divers. With another day on the boat, we decided to take on the next qualification, the Adventure Diver Course. This would allow us to dive up to 30m unsupervised.

To do this we had to do another 3 dives with our instructor; a deep dive, a navigation dive and a scary night dive. As we prepared to do the night dive, we found large fish and even larger grey reef SHARKS circling the boat. During our night dive briefing the instructors asked who was scared of sharks, our hands shot up only to discover that nobody else had raised their hand. Just us then.

 Despite our reassuring briefing sharks are still sharks, so, of course, I sent Alex in first to test the water and also to test the sharks' appetite. The night dive was very scary, we used up the air in our tanks very quickly as a result of this, nevertheless we both found the night dive to be exhilarating and exciting (after we were safely out of the shark infested water that is).





Other than sharks we saw plenty of colourful fish and corals, turtles and sting-rays.





We are both now certified open water scuba divers and certified Adventure divers. Job done.

                                    The Great Barrier Reef- they don't call it great for nothing!