Diving at the Great Barrier Reef

We used the first day in Cairns to gather information about the possible diving spots. The Great Barrier Reef is famously about 2,300 km long and houses over 2,900 individual reefs on an area of approximately 347,800 km². Finding the suitable diving spot is not that easy. In the end, we decided to go on a day trip with 2-3 dives. So, the next day at 8 o'clock, we stood at the Reef Fleet Terminal and boarded the Silverswift. A catamaran for about 90 guests - divers as well as snorkelers. When looking for travel and diving tips on the internet, it says that the best time for diving is from October to April. There is less wave motion and wind... Well, the wind didn't bother us, but it wasn't exactly calm. We spent the one-hour journey to the reef listening to diving instructions, etc. on the upper deck... I (Seraina) spent the next half hour, until we (finally) arrived at the reef, at the stern and was very nicely supplied with paper bags and tissues by Jario...

Finally, the catamaran was tied up and the divers were ready to jump into the relieving water. Our group was the first in line, so after the diving guide, I was the first one in the water.

Now, let's talk about the reef and the dive sites: We dived at Flynn Reef in the Coral Gardens, Gordon's Mooring, and Tracy's Bommie. Originally, we booked 2 dives and 1 snorkelling session, but then decided to go for a third dive on the boat. All three dives were beautiful. We saw reef sharks, a hawksbill turtle, stingrays, clown triggerfish, a moray eel, a few nudibranchs and slugs, as well as beautiful corals and magnificent giant clams. We swam through canyons and around huge bommies (massive corals). Unfortunately, we also saw the problems and the coral bleaching. There were areas with almost only dead corals and others that were almost completely covered with algae. Even though there were quite a lot of divers, we didn't find the dive spots to be overcrowded. It was worse at Manta Point in Nusa Lembongan. It was probably because we were the first group in the water. There were a total of three groups with 6-8 divers each on the boat.

There was lunch between the second and third dive. Luckily, it stayed where it belonged on the return journey. We were back around 5 pm and could check off another item on our bucket list: Diving at the Great Barrier Reef - CHECK.

In conclusion, it was nice, but we have already visited other dive spots that were more diverse and colorful than Flynn Reef. Furthermore, we found the whole experience to be a bit overpriced for what it ultimately was.

We don't want to judge the huge Great Barrier Reef based on our one-day diving experience at small Flynn Reef - that would be simply impossible and wrong. For us, it was a cool day with three great dives, but nothing absolutely mind-blowing as the big name might suggest. So, we are already looking forward to our next diving experience, which will hopefully take place in Vanuatu. But until then, we have a few more days to spend getting from Cairns to Brisbane... We will tell you about that in the next post.

PS: Thanks to our new red filter for the diving housing of our GoPro Hero 5, the associated video is much better in terms of quality this time - we hope you like it.