Great Barrier Reef

One of the things that Australia is famous for is the Great Barrier Reef… and we were set to explore it in style. At 4 times our budget, it was a bit of a splurge for us, but for 3 days we would be pampered aboard the Spoil Sport for some some scuba diving along the world’s largest barrier reef. We had heard from a few people that some of the outer reefs were pretty badly damaged from too many visitors over the years, so we wanted to sign up for a liveaboard that took us off the beaten track. Rich Hudnut and Steve Kuo both gave some good recommendations for dive operators to use, and it was a toss up that we ended up going with Mike Ball’s operation instead of aboard the Spirit of Freedom… Basically the departure schedule lined up better for us with the Spoil Sport. In either case, the passenger to crew ratio was a ridiculously low 2-to-1, with only 20 some odd divers aboard: We weren’t going to be bumping into too many other people in the water.

Usually the dive boats only transport people in one direction… either out towards Lizard Island or back from Lizard Island. You can sign up for a complete round trip, but this takes all week and is insanely expensive. As our trip was scheduled to depart from Lizard Island, we began our journey with a spectacular low level (500ft) flight over the outer barrier reef. Here we had a unique overhead perspective of the reef, even seeing some of the day-trip boats moored up with snorkelers in the water! The reefs looked fine to me, but I supposed it’s difficult to see any damage from that high up. As we approached Lizard Island, I got my first glimpse of the Spoilsport anchored in a calm, turquoise bay. She looked a little dated and maybe needing of a fresh coat of paint… still, she was sleek and ready to run. I was giddy with anticipation.

Day 1:

On our first day we were scheduled to visit two dive sites: Snake Pit and Cod Hole. Cod Hole is the dive spot that everyone comes out here to see. As the name implies, this site is populated with a school of rather large potato cod fish. These guys can get to be as big as Ana, but tend to be pretty laid back: They don’t mind too much if you swim up to them. One thing that was cool was that we went for two dives out at Cod Hole… one during the afternoon and one at night. The night dive was interesting in that the potato cods became noticeably more active than they were during the day. Their hunting style is pretty comical in that they have become quite used to divers wandering around at night. Whenever someone shone their torch(flashlight) on something tasty, a potato cod would come swooping in and inhale the little critters whole… the spectacle punctuated by an audible “WOOMP!” of the cod’s smacking lips (and sometimes with the cheers of the sporting torch holder). I nearly choked from laughter at one point as Martin (a fellow diver from Sydney) led one unsuspecting fish to its demise and then promptly raised both fists above his head in show of victory!

Day 2:

We started off our day with a (very) early morning wake up call to start our first dive at a place called Pixie Gardens. This place was great in that the whole terrain was filled with hard corals of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. Green corals, blue corals, pink and yellow corals… it was a virtual kaleidoscope down there! In addition to all the coral, every now and then one would find great giant clams embedded within the stone formations. These guys were immense at over 4 feet wide… and surprisingly quite colorful! With it’s shell open, the tongue would be iridescent blue and purple… not the fleshy pink and tan that one would normally expect.

After lunch and a brief presentation on reef ecology, we arrived at our 2nd dive site of Lighthouse Bommie. Lighthouse Bommie looks kind of how the name implies: It’s a spiraling cylindrical tower that rises from the sea floor, forming a lighthouse type of structure. This makes for a great dive site as one can see lots of different types of fish that like to hang out at different depths… just start at the bottom and circle your way around and up back to the top of the Bommie (a Bommie is an Australian term for an isolated, tower-like reef structure). We saw lots of cool things here like lion fish and different schools swimming around. Probably the most unnerving thing to see here were the sea snakes(!) cruising around the bottom and swimming around amongst us. I’m pretty sure that these guys are potentially poisonous, but they seem to not really be bothered by divers swimming around. I still couldn’t help but feel nervous though. For this dive we dove with a couple from Phoenix named Bruce and Carmen, who recently quit their jobs as physicians and are about to travel the world for 6 months! Bravo, guys… Bravo! Hopefully your travels will be full of adventure before settling down to your new jobs in New Zealand. Mahalo Bruce, and good luck.

Day 3:

For our last day on the boat, we started off by visiting Steve’s Bommie, another one of Australia’s famous dive spots. This place, much like Lighthouse Bommie, has lots of different types of fish that cruise around at varying depths. The two things to see here are the stonefish and the feather tipped scorpion fish (I think that’s what they are called)… two types of fish that camouflage themselves to blend in with the surrounding coral. The stonefish were easy enough to spot, but the scorpion fish were sadly not to be found that day. In any case the stone fish were pretty cool. They were pretty difficult to spot at first, but if you waited long enough, they would move and suddenly appear out of the rocks! Awesome.

Finishing off our tour we hit Flare Point, our last dive site. Flare point was cool because we saw a lot of unique things that were rare to spot. For this set of dives, Ana and I were one of the first ones off the boat, so we had a better chance to see some of the shyer underwater life before they got scared off. At one point, we saw a turtle swimming in the shallow coral, then spotted another one swimming in the deep… only to have it cross paths with a huge manta ray! Quite rare indeed. Our second time down presented us with a sting ray hiding on the sandy floor and a couple of cuttlefish hovering above some mid-level corals. The cuttlefish were eerie looking as they looked like they sneezed out a set of tentacles forming a snout… Ewwww! :-) Seriously though, hovering in place like some underwater dirigible… these guys were quite alien to look at.

Impressions:

All in all, I think we went on about 10 out of the 12 dives over 3 days: pretty amazing. This was the first time that either Ana or I had the good fortune to have a dive computer for our dives, and it’s amazing how easily the computers keep track of things over multiple dives… It computes how long you have been down over multiple days, remembers the amount of nitrogen in you blood, and lets you know exactly how long you can stay down at any depth: All of this done in real time. Pretty cool. It’s no wonder that no one uses dive tables these days. I just wish that the things weren’t so expensive. Our overall experience on the Spoil Sport was a great one, with a super friendly crew and surprisingly great meals every day. If we wanted to dive on our own, we had pretty much full freedom to go our own way. If we wanted someone to show us around, there always seemed to be a dive master around to point out the more elusive marine life. To anyone who can afford it, I would definitely recommend this trip.

Click Here to see the route that we took through the Great Barrier Reef.

…and Click Here to see where the Great Barrier Reef is in Australia.

as always, our photos are archived on picasaweb, so feel free to head over and check them out: http://www.picasaweb.com/richmosko/GreatBarrierReef

 

Tags: Australia,Great Barrier Reef,Cod Hole,Spoilport,Lizard Island,Diving,SCUBA