Diving The Great Barrier Reef - 2004 : Sunday

The breakfast bell was at 7:30am; many divers had a rough night's sleep due to the waves and the crossing. The boat was moored at "Mid Life Crisis", which was an "exploratory" site. Visibility was not as good, but there was lots of life. We swam around and saw a shark, a lion fish, several crown of thorns, a big blue starfish, an orange starfish, a nudibranch, a clown fish and even a cuttlefish! We followed the cuttlefish for a while, we had never seen one before and they are really cool looking.

This is what "attacked" Rick

Such an odd mouth

Everyone decided to stay on this site for a second dive. Margaret and Deborah followed us on our second dive. We went back around the site and saw another cuttlefish and a couple of spotted rays under coral. There was lots of life up around the top of the bommie. We did our safety stop on top of the bommie, since it was only 15 feet deep. Back on boat lunch was nachos, tortillas and chicken wings.

We took a vote and all decided to head for the Yongala since the weather was improving. We were all hoping to get 2 dives today, 5-6 tomorrow. The Yongala was a large passenger liner that went down in 1911, taking 124 people down with it. We did our first dive on the Yongala at 5pm. We had a dive briefing covering the mooring lines down to the wreck.

What a weird looking fish!

Cuttlefish

We headed down with Matt as our guide to familiarize everyone with the site. We swam along the side of ship, from bow to stern. There was an absolutely incredible amount of life, layers and layers of small fish. We saw a couple of sea snakes. They are very poisonous, but won't bother you unless you deliberately anger them. We also saw lots of very big fish. At the bow two trevallis went by, one with a batfish in its mouth. Out of nowhere a bull shark swooped in to get some, causing all of the other fish to swim away. It all happened right below the fins of the other divers. It was very exciting!

Back on board we looked at pictures and started to rank them. The swell was getting rougher, and turned out to be too rough for the night dive (they were worried about people getting hurt on the ladders), so we had to cancel the dive. Everyone was disappointed, but we understood the need for safety. Dinner was pork and beef roast. Afterwards we hung out with the others, then headed to our cabin to finish watching Matrix and get a good night's sleep.

So much life!