Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Today we woke up early and walked to the harbor to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef!

We got on a large boat with 70 other passengers and a very professional crew. It was a mixed passenger group, with certified divers doing their own dives, a very large cohort of snorkelers, and then a group of 20 or so first time divers.

We went through a long safety briefing, and were then paired four to an instructor for in the water training and our first dive.

We were both pretty nervous for the first dive, as it was very disconcerting breathing through a regulator and having to equalize pressure every few feet. The first dive we focused mostly on breathing and learning the ropes. We did see a huge school of massive fish, and beautiful parts of the reef, but the first dive was sort of a blur for us both! The way they trained us to go down was having us go hand over hand down a rope to a metal bar, which we grasped for training on what to do if our regulator came out of our mouths. At this point we were both thinking maybe we wanted to go back up 😂 but we persevered through the training. Chris was breathing so fast that they decided to give him a bigger air tank for the second dive! (He was running out of air on the first dive, so our group went back a bit early)

After the first dive we did a ton of snorkeling over the reef, and then decompressed and boated to the second reef location for our next dive. This time we were much more relaxed, and could focus more on the sights. We saw SO many beautiful fish and reef formations, as well as squid and all sorts of anemone. The second dive was longer, and so much more enjoyable now that we knew the ropes and could focus on what we were seeing. Chris’ bigger tank served him well, and he had a surplus of air!

Following the second dive we did a bunch more snorkeling, and took a ton of pictures with our underwater camera we’d rented.

Once we returned to Cairns we celebrated our dive with a fancy Italian dinner and drinks at Bellocale Italian, followed by a local brewery Coral Sea Brewing Co.Read more