Here are some of our favorite photos from the trip (each photo is a thumbnail linked to a higher quality picture. There are five pages of photos in total):
1) The third section of our REI tour was three days on a live aboard boat SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef. This portion of the trip was actually handled by an outside company, Pro Dive, and we were aboard their boat ScubaPro III.
2) We'd been told beforehand that diving on the Great Barrier Reef would spoil us on diving. Even our first practice dive made is obvious why we'd been told that. The diversity of sea life on the Reef is incredible as this photo shows.
3) The individual things seen were as amazing as the sheer number of things seen. This photo is of a giant clam...and I mean giant. It is nearly 5 ft long (for reference, the yellow fish near the top of the photo is the size of an adult's hand!)
4) Another part of the weird and wonderful undersea world. This is a 3 foot long sea slug, one of many we saw slowly crawling along the seafloor.
5) One of the highlights of our diving trip was seeing sea turtles like this Hawksbill Turtle which we watched feeding on sponges on this mound of coral.
6) Among the alpha predators on the Reef are the barracuda. We saw a few small groups of them, including this Sawtooth Barracuda.
7) REI guide Shawn was out of action due to an infected tick bite incurred while camping so Steve was our guide for the SCUBA trip. In between dives (there were 11 total) we got to hang out on the upper sundeck and enjoy the sunshine.
8) Each dive was proceeded by a dive briefing that went over the basic seascape we'd encounter, the headings to use for navigation and some highlights to look for during the dive.
9) How much did we enjoy SCUBA? In this photo we are wearing cold, clammy wetsuits, we are each loaded down with about 40 lbs of gear, we are getting blasted by a 20 knot wind and yet we're all still grinning from ear to ear.
10) Larkin was the iron man of our SCUBA trip. He did all eleven dives, including both night dives!
11) A celebrity sighting! This is Wally the Maori Wrasse. He is a seriously large fish, around 4ft long, but he is also extremely friendly. He swam alongside us as we descended on one of our dives and we saw him again briefly that evening during a night dive. As for the celebrity part, how many fish do you know that have their own Facebook page and YouTube channel?
12) The diversity of coral found on even a small section of the Great Barrier Reef is staggering. The palate of colors is amazing, the variety of shapes beyond imagination and the length of time required for tiny little coral polyps to build such a massive reef defies comprehension!
13) Each cubic yard of the reef is just as rich with life as this photo!
14) Despite this photo being blurry, it shows the cutest scene we saw while diving. A pair of clown fish living in a sea anemone... the classic Nemo image.
15) This big school of parrotfish swam past us, surrounding us like a cloud.
16) Whitetip reef sharks are one of the few species of shark which can pump water over its gills, allowing it to lie still on the bottom of the ocean. We saw a few different sharks during our dives but this is only one we saw sitting still. Unfortunately, the photo is too dark to clearly see the Ramora fish which is sitting to its nose.
17) Another photo showing just how diverse is the coral that makes up the reef. Unfortunately, underwater photography washs out colors and so the resulting photos don't accurately capture how colorful it really is.
18) An underwater portrait of Jonna, showing off her SCUBA skills.
19) This photo shows a small group of fish exhibiting the classic school defense: grouped together and swimming in formation with the entire unit moving in unison.
20) On our return to Cairns after the SCUBA trip we found a great local eatery, The Green Ant Cantina, for dinner. This photo shows a little of the funky decor and one of the huge plates of food.
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