Dive at Norman Reef

15.06.17

Our second tour to the largest organism in the world is on the agenda. Arriving at the port, we join the line for our boat "Reef Experience". It immediately becomes clear to us that this excursion will be significantly different from the Lady Musgrave tour. The ship, with an estimated over 100 seats, was almost fully booked and reminded us of mass animal farming. Our mood was therefore initially in the basement. After signing that we are aware of the dangers involved, there is a breakfast buffet. We set off and during the 75-minute journey, there is a small lecture about the underwater world of the Great Barrier Reef and later a briefing for our dive. There, all trained divers are divided into two groups of three. A nice Dutchman joins us in our group, with whom we chat throughout the trip. Shortly before we anchor, we put on our wetsuits and realize that they don't fit and are also broken. So we go back to the partly unfriendly staff and have them give us some proper wet suits. After exchanging them twice, I finally get a proper one.

Since Claudi loses the rock-paper-scissors game despite taking a fountain once ;D, we are later in line and can go snorkeling while the other group dives. We are not in the water for long when we already see a 1.5m long whitetip reef shark. We mentally check it off our list, check. Now we are even more excited about our dive. The water is even 2°C warmer (25°C) than on the last dive. However, there is much stronger swell, as we are not in a lagoon this time.

Then it's our turn and we put on our scuba gear. The atmosphere is unfortunately a bit hectic, as many other passengers take the opportunity to do a trial dive course. Underwater, however, we don't notice any of this, as the beginners only dive close to the boat. Our dive begins and our guide swims ahead. At the beginning, we think that we are diving to a specific spot, as our guide is moving quickly and not diving along the seabed or the corals. We sometimes have quite a hard time following, let alone being able to look at things calmly. After a few minutes, we've had enough and swim at our own comfortable pace. The first dive was not very nice for the reasons mentioned, especially since Claudi had to surface early because she had a smaller tank than we did and therefore had less air available. Towards the end of the dive, I was able to see a reef shark again.

After lunch, we talked to Keriem from the other dive group and exchanged our impressions. For the second dive, we insisted on having the dive guide that Keriem had before. Keriem then added to our group. So the four of us dove with the guide.

The second dive is much better than the first and the spot is more beautiful too. We dive through coral valleys and along high coral walls. A wonderful underwater landscape that once again confirms why we got our diving certification a year ago. Of course, we also saw many colorful fish such as surgeonfish, parrotfish, and even pufferfish whose heads look like dog heads.

Overall, very nice dives, but with a somewhat bitter aftertaste due to the surroundings.