Diving in the Great Barrier Reef!

 

We walked from our hostel to the dock on December 13th for our scuba diving and snorkeling expedition at the Great Barrier Reef with Diving Den. This was an all day tour from 8 am to 4 pm.

They took us on a boat out to near Green Island, a well-known area for diving. There were probably about 40 or 50 guests on the boat.

Khevron had once before gone scuba diving (37 years ago) and said he had difficulty remembering to breathe. 

Lareena had never done either before. We were excited and a little nervous to try it. We would only get one “introductory dive,” which is for people who are not certified (which we’re not). On that dive, an instructor is with you all the time and you aren’t allowed to use a camera. They do take photos which they will sell you, and we did buy a photo package. Frankly, I wouldn’t have wanted to bother with trying to use a camera while doing this first time. So most of the underwater photos here are theirs, though Khevron took some Gopro footage.

Since our group was second to dive, we got to try out the snorkeling first, which we can use our cameras for. I didn’t attempt using my Gopro, though I had it there, I left it on the deck. I think snorkeling was easier in ways than diving, but I did not attempt to dive down in the water, I just stayed on top and tried to keep the water out of the snorkel, which was hard.

Then came our time to dive. We put on a wetsuit (to ward off jellyfish) and the oxygen tank (which was very heavy) as well as some weights.

We went to the side of the ship and there they had ropes going into the water and we slowly pulled ourselves down while equalizing the pressure on our ears by trying to pop them. I’m not sure I was very good at this. I got a headache those first few minutes, though after awhile it felt better. 

Any attempt to swim by myself or kick my feet felt awkward and seems to make me run into the people next to me, partly because 3 of us were holding onto the diving guide’s arms.

I worked hard to remember to breathe and eventually relaxed and enjoyed the scenery of the reef and the fishes swimming around us.

We saw several reef sharks, which they have previously explained are not dangerous because they are scared of humans and will not approach. That was a pretty exciting sighting.

They took photos of us and after about 30 minutes we returned to the surface.

Khevron’s FB Album:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10242169513593836&type=3

We went snorkeling again and this time I did try my Gopro Max 360 camera underwater, but I was disappointed with the results. And it turns out that the lens and being so wide angle makes for bad blurry underwater video if you don’t have an extra external casing.

On the other hand, Khevron’s Gopro Hero videos were better.