Liveaboard Day 2

Got woken up at 5:30am for what I am certain is the earliest swim I have ever taken. Luckily, there was some marine life up and about as well. A sting ray, for starters.





Pretty soon things got even more interesting when we happened upon a turtle... this time in shallow waters. I thought I was gonna get the photo of the day by catching up to the turtle and snapping this shot.





Little did I know that Ming had found a second turtle just behind me who was posing just in front of her.





We also got a look at a nifty flatworm perched on some coral. Or maybe it's a Spanish dancer, I forgot to ask the guide. Looking it up on Google didn't help since they both seem to have the same general shape and cool fluttering swimming motion. 10 points to the person who can identify it correctly for me:





This sea creature needs no identification.





As we swam back to our safety stop, I snapped this shot of our guide.





When diving below 6 meters for any length of time you shouldn't ascend faster than 10 meters per minute. A safety stop is also a common practice, where the divers spend three minutes or so suspended around five meters below sea level to be absolutely sure excess gas from the body is released to avoid decompression sickness. This boat had a helpful bar at precisely the right depth equipped with a spare tank ready for anyone who ran out of air. I'd like to say this shot was carefully orchestrated to give the diver's perspective of waiting calmly on the bar, but really I accidentally snapped this photo while fumbling to get my buoyancy under control:





Our second dive of the day started off with more worms... well, actually this is just a single worm of sorts with a bunch of tentacles which are splayed out over the coral. If you touch one, they all quickly retract back into the cave where the body of the animal remains hidden.





We moved on to find more creepy crawlies. There are over 3,000 species of nudibranch. Here's one.





Here's another.





At least 2,998 to go. While on our nudibranch hunt we almost didn't notice this reef shark swimming past; it might be hard to spot in this picture. It's just a meter long and it's way off in the distance. If you squint harder, you might also see a colossal squid. If you don't see either within a few minutes, try crossing your eyes and then slowly uncross them.





One certainly works up an appetite while diving. The boat had its own chef who cooked us up three hot meals each day. Here's the cafeteria... which come to think of it, probably has a special name if it's on a boat.






For our last dive, we moved over to Moore reef. This dive site was home to some giant clams, which Ming and I were excited about. Liz, our intrepid dive guide in training, assured us that we'd be able to track one down. I was confident I could out-swim the beast, since it pretty much glues itself in place. This clam's main mode of defense is camouflage. When they are closed they look as though they're just another part of the surrounding coral. After swimming around for a while, I was about to give up hope, when suddenly we spotted this guy on a coral wall. He was as big as my head.





Ming was busy snapping photos of the clam above when I noticed the guide trying to get our attention. I turned around to see the biggest clam I'd ever seen. This guy was not hard to spot... but Ming was still fixated on the comparatively tiny clam on the coral wall. I had to swim to her and physically turn her around so that she could snap this picture of me... with my eyes closed. Oh well.





We got one of the two of us too. When diving, they told us to stick out the pinky when giving the thumbs up to differentiate the hand signal from the one that means, "let's ascend to the surface." Ming took it a step further and turned it into that Hawaiian "hang loose" symbol.






Here's a fish getting dangerously close to the giant clam. Well, it's probably not as dangerous as it looks since clams don't actually eat fish... but they look like they should be the venus flytraps of the sea. But alas, I don't think this giant clam can even close its shell entirely anymore.





To prove I actually did open my eyes underwater, I've included this shot.





I guess Ming's actually going to the surface in this one.





Maybe not. We continued on through some beautiful coral.





Tiny colorful fish swim through the branches.





Ming and Liz swam on ahead while I was taking coral pictures when I suddenly noticed an odd spot in a crevice of a coral covered rock. I wasn't sure what it was, but I didn't want to leave it without getting an answer. Unfortunately Ming and Liz were swimming on ahead blissfully unaware that I had stopped 5 meters back to look at this thing.

There aren't a lot of ways to do long distance signaling in the water... especially when your dive buddies aren't even looking at you. Whistling, for instance, is not an option. The guides have special devices that make a rather loud quacking sound underwater. Without that device, I thought, I was out of luck... until I remembered I was married. The only two pieces of metal that I could conceivably clank together were my wedding ring and the aluminum tank on my back. The metallic tapping was enough to get Ming to turn around, and once Ming disappeared from Liz's peripheral vision, Liz turned around as well.

After everyone gathered around the rock I was staring at, it took another couple minutes of pointing and questioning looks before Liz finally saw why I'd stopped. It didn't help that we'd kicked up a lot of debris in the process of getting into position. Here's what we were seeing. Can you guess what it is?






20 points if you guessed shark. Another 10 points for knowing the species: it's an Epaulette Shark. The white ringed dark splotch gives it away if you know your sharks... which I didn't... I just thought it looked cool. I didn't even know it was a shark until Liz waved over another guide and pointed and waved for another few minutes to no avail before putting up the universal signal for shark: a single hand held up to her head to symbolize the dorsal fin. Unfortunately, this guy was tucked in pretty deep, so we didn't get a better look, let alone a better picture.

We moved on to some other marine life that was more willing to sit out in the open for photos.







We ended the dive with a few shots of this colorful starfish.






That wraps up our 6 dives on Kangaroo Explorer (the name of our live-aboard.) I took a nap on the sun deck while we waited for the ferry boat to arrive.







Most of the passengers were leaving the day we were, so I guess we did well timing-wise. The weather was great too. It was never rocky to the point of seasickness (like some dive boats I've been on in Florida.).







That said, I'm not sure I could handle that schedule for more than a night or maybe two. Technically you can do up to four dives a day, every day, until you disembark. We were happy with our one-night, but also looking forward to putting our feet on some firm ground. We still had a couple nights in Cairns, so we picked up a rental car on the way back to our accommodations.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cairns, Australia

Swimming with the fish - Day 1

Man I was tired this morning. We had to wake up extra early because we didn't yet have a rental car, so we had to rely on the diving company to transport us to the ferry.  Since we lived in the suburbs, we caught a ride in with Rick on his own way to work at the Dive Centre -- so we arrived about an hour before our ferry departure, but hey -- better that than biking in with our scuba gear! 

Ian snapped this shot as we were cruising on the morning ferry. He was surprisingly more alert than I.  I guess it has to happen once every two months.  

 

We had to take the ferry to get to our liveaboard. These diving companies are pretty smart. They essentially run this liveaboard permanently out on the outer reef and then get ferries to deliver their customers out to sea every day. That way, the liveaboard itself can offer diving to their customers all day long without having to worry about coming to shore. We got to the boat around 10:30. We were going to be diving (if we wanted to, that is), at 1PM, 4PM, and 7PM (a night dive!) today, and 6AM, 8AM, and 11AM tomorrow. With an additional snorkel at 1PM tomorrow if we felt like it.

 

Our first dive was in a big group (besides us, there were 4 other certified divers on the trip) so that the divemaster could be satisfied that we all knew how to dive. For those who aren't scuba divers, a quick little primer on some of the facts.  We were only open water certified, so we're only trained to go down to 100 feet.  The deeper you go, the more air compresses.  That means a few things:  deeper dives will require more air (read: Ian's air will run out more quickly), deeper dives will require more decompression/safety stops on the way up (because more nitrogen and other gases will have built up in your body), and deeper dives will require more equalization on the way down (because all the little pockets of air around your eyes, nose, ears, etc, become little vacuum-like places -- especially for your ears -- you need to equalize by swallowing or blowing air out of your ears every few feet otherwise it gets very very uncomfortable). 

If you stay above 30 feet or so, you don't have to worry about decompression stops -- then all you have to do is exhale the whole way up.  Since the air in your lungs will expand as you go up, you'll just keep exhaling and you won't run out of air.  Due to all the decompression calculations (your body can only take so many minutes at such and such a depth every hour so that all those gases have time to get out of your system), the general rule is to go to your deepest depth on the first dive and then get shallower and shallower.  We were supposed to reach 18 meters on this first dive...but maybe we all got excited or something, because none of us made it deeper than 13.  Luckily, most of the stuff that's cool at the reef was above 13 meters.

Unfortunately, we didn't get an underwater camera for the first dive. Wouldn't you know it though -- that's when we saw one of the coolest things all trip. This HUGE starfish. Must've been at least 3 feet long from end to end. If Ian wasn't convinced before, that definitely sealed the deal on underwater camera rentals for the rest of the dives! 

Diving with the liveaboard was MUCH nicer than all of our other diving trips. My favorite part was that you didn't have to put together your own equipment. I hate hate hate that part of scuba diving. Here, someone else puts the BC and the tanks and the regulators and everything together for you. All you have to do is put on a wetsuit and strap on the BC. Sweet.  (P.S.  BC stands for buoyancy compensator, which is basically a vest that allows you to control your depth.)

Within minutes of our second dive, Ian had some good photo opportunities.  I thought we weren't supposed to touch anything...but the divemaster diving with us picked up this sea cucumber and started handing it to everyone to hold. It was like terrycloth underneath!

He was licensed to feed the fish -- so as soon as he pulled out his cat food (that's literally what he feeds them), the fish came swarming from all around.

  

The wrasse came too -- these guys were about half the size of our guide!

  

Or the full size of me...

Check out the turtle! 

And the sting ray being chased by a fish!

As you can see from all the bubbles around us, this dive was a little crowded.  We figured we'd go without the divemaster next time and stick with just one of the divemasters-in-training from yesterday.

 

Ian was always focused on the fish, so it was up to me to capture some shots of the actual coral and the smaller fish.  Here's me in action!

I have no idea what all of these coral bits and pieces are -- but aren't they cool???

 

I got a couple shots of the sea cucumber up close.

 

And the flute fish.

 

And some kind of parrot fish. Colors were way better in person - oh well.

The coral as ecosystem as an action shot!

 

All too soon, our air ran out so we had to surface. Turns out the sun was starting to set back above the water.

Pretty soon it would be time for our night dive.  For now though, it was enjoy the sunset time.

I admit I'm a little obsessed with my new-found sunset-mode on my camera.

We didn't take the camera on the night dive -- and to be honest, while it was cool to see the creatures that lit up for nocturnal feeding, it actually wasn't all that amazing for me. I think because we had to go as a big group again, it was mostly torch light that you were seeing and not so much wildlife. Also, the people up front would undoubtedly scare away the cool animal, which meant that I didn't actually catch a glimpse of the crab or the lobster.  I did see a turtle swimming around though -- that was pretty cool. We'd seen the other turtle during our day dive, but it was just sitting on the ocean floor. This guy was actually swimming around. 

Anyhow, the night dive was very short and we were out of the water and into our rooms by 9PM. They restricted everyone to only 3 minutes of freshwater for showering everyday so getting ready for bed was pretty quick.  Plus, we wanted to be alert for our 6AM dive.

How does that scuba thing work again?

Now that it was daylight again, we could really appreciate our accommodations in Cairns. We decided to rent a room in a B&B-type of place. The owners, Terry and Robyn, were extremely nice folks. They manage their own commercial construction company, so obviously their own home was quite comfortable as well.

 

One aspect we particularly enjoyed after our tramps in Uluru and the communal showers:  huge private whirlpool tub!

Ian also loved the fact that they were right in the jungle. We saw a large variety of wildlife just sitting around the house. Here's our outdoor breakfast area (so cute!)

And some of the visitors that would wander nearby as we ate…not naming this first one, but trust me that it was actually more cool than scary/eww-y.

Turkeys in Australia are much cooler than those in the US.

Enough about all the wildlife though. The only item on the agenda today was a scuba refresher course.  Our liveaboard company, the Cairns Dive Center, offered a free refresher the day before the trip -- I needed it. I'd only done that one Majorca/Barcelona trip after getting certified so this was my first big dive trip. Ian, with that week in the Florida Keys under his belt, probably needed it less.  It's not that I actually forgot my skills, but being able to try everything out in the pool just put me so much more at ease.  And it turns out that we'd arrived at a good time -- there are a few divemasters-in-training (Liz, Micha, and Andreas) at the Cairns Dive Center trying to get certified as guides, so we got a TON of personal attention.  All three of them were going to be on our liveaboard trip too; they informed us that they'd be offering their services as guides free-of-charge so that they could get more experience.  So we'll be seeing a lot more of them in the next couple days.

After the refresher, I somehow managed to convince Ian to ride bikes down to Cairns city.  Robyn had her son put together these brand new push-bikes (that's what they call them here, I suppose that makes sense, comparing them to motor-bikes) and opened up some brand new helmets as well. It was a GREAT ride down to the city. Nice breeze, mostly down-hill, good scenery around the Esplanade. We polished it off with a great dinner at the Raw Prawn -- figured out what crocodile was actually supposed to taste like and had some amazing kangaroo too.  The Esplanade also had some cute novelty stores.

As the sun set though, we realized to our dismay that our bikes did not have any lights...and that a lot of those cute bike paths that we'd ridden on did not have lights either. Hmmm...there might be more "pushing" than "biking."  We got home pretty exhausted.  Quick to bed...5:45AM pick-up tomorrow morning!