Diving at the Great Barrier Reef

If someone speaks about the Great Barrier Reef, it´s most likely because of diving. As we don´t want to listen to theses stories all the time, we went there to find out what it´s all about!
The reef consists of hundreds of small reefs extending in two lines from north to south along the north-eastern coast of Australia. Some time ago most people went diving at the reef closer to Australia, but today everybody speaks of the Outer Reef. Most of the divers go there by fast boats which carry up to more than two hundred passengers: divers (many of them making their first dives), snorklers and visitors who want to enjoy the reef "dry".
We found a company advertising with the words "serious diving" and "professional" and on this day they took out only forty passengers. We were lucky: except us there were only three certified divers and so our divegroup was of a size we like!
What we did not like were the two times 90 minutes boatride on a quite rough sea ... we wanted to be under water not on the water! But after the jump into the not-so-cold water this was quick forgotten.
But what we saw was not what we expected to see. Corals were abundant everywhere, but most of them were very colourless, seemingly dead. Colourful were the many different fish living in these corals. We were happily surprised by the amount of fish we met "down there". But what we also looked for in vain were these nice little creatures called nudibranches.
And what surprised us even more was our dive-guide: he did not miss a chance to feed the different animals with prawns out of his jacket. We think "professional" diving means leaving the underwater-world as it is, surely not teaching the fish that they don´t need to hunt any more!

We enjoyed diving at the Great Barrier Reef, but after a - with three dives a bit hectic - day diving we can say: we know better places to dive!

But after all, here are some of the sight´s we caught in pictures for you:

Click on the pictures to view them larger.