Diving on the Great Barrier Reef
We took a five day SCUBA certification class in Cairns. The first
two days were in town, using their special pool. The last three were
aboard one of the two big dive boats operated by Pro Dive.
We can't recommend Pro Dive Cairns highly enough. Their instructors
were great - both good teachers and great guys. I'm not sure everyone
agreed, but we really liked the food on board, too!
Here's Alison in our tiny room on the dive boat. Vernon had the
lower bunk, which was not only lower, but closer to the door, since the
outer wall of the room was hull-shaped.
After our certification, we went on a night dive as a group. You
get a flashlight to peer at things with, and a cold glow stick tied to
your first stage, so everyone can see where everyone else is (the green
thing sticking up off the top of the tank). Here we are going into
the water.
The first thing we did on 1/1/01 was to get up at 6:00am and into the water.
We rented an underwater camera and went nuts.
Here's a trumpet fish
Alison by the light of the underwater strobe
Some beautiful coral and a wrasse of some kind. We bought a "fish
identification card" that you can take underwater with you, but once we
were down there the fish wouldn't stand still to be interrogated.
More coral!
