Tuesday March 23, 2010

Guest post by Donna. The food is fabulous but the seas are rough (so for those who know me, this is not a good combination). Although as I’m writing this Neptune has finally decided so take pity and the seas have calmed down a bit and so has my stomach. Gregg has been on four dives so far today. I’ve done every other but we’re both planning on doing the night dive. I finally saw my first white tipped reef shark and a big old nurse shark parked itself right under the boat. There are new corals and fish species here. Hugh clams with extravagant lips reminiscent of Seymour on Little Shop of Horrors.

Today we found a new best friend Cod fish whom we’ve named Cyril the Cod. He was expecting perhaps a meal and kept nudging right up to us and patiently posing for pictures in hopes that one would appear.

On my last dive Gregg decided not to take the camera so of course we saw the coolest cuttle fish and then I found these three shrimp that looked liked psychedelic grasshoppers. Even our dive master had not seen these before. Alas, no camera, no photo and perhaps it was a new species would have named the crazy grasshopper shrimp. There are some nice folks on the boat so the company is good. Well that’s it for today. We’ll be out of range later in the week but hope to get some more pictures before then.

Monday March 22, 2010



Easy morning. We got ourselves packed and went for a bit of breakfast. Yesterday, while walking around Cairns, I was interviewed by the local paper. They wanted to know if I had been concerned about Cyclone Ului. I let them know that I had been tracking that thing for about the last two weeks from the states. They seemed surprised. (More on this later)


The folks from the Spirit of Freedom picked us up around 11:30 am for a 12 noon departure. We have 14 divers / guests on board and a crew of 10. We headed north up the coast to Jorgi’s Reef for a couple of shakeout dives. Some of these pictures are out of order but I cant post without at least one picture.

First Day in Cairns!

Saturday March 20th

I was actually able to sleep through the whole night and think I am “turned around” jet lag wise. Donna took a swim this morning in a pool just off the ocean across the street from our hotel room. Then we rented a car and headed out in search of the elusive Koala bears. (we were too chicken to go looking for crocs) Driving in Australia is interesting. The steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car, but that makes a perverted kind of sense because you drive on the wrong side of the road.

It was in interesting time. We drove about 25 km north of town and took a tram to a Kuranda Village. We had a nice lunch and found the Koala’s. We also found some snakes and kangaroos.

We drove up to Port Douglas (about 65km) and back to enjoy the scenic drive. Well, kind of… Donna was having vision problems due to salty eyes from here morning swim and I was too terrified to take my eyes off the road for even a second. We did stop at a scenic outlook for a while. Crossing our fingers that the weather holds and the boat trip is nice and easy.


All in all this was a great day. It is about 8pm as I write this and tomorrow we are due to board the Spirit of Freedom to dive the Great Barrier Reef. I will have to hit the local McDonalds for breakfast and to get internet access to upload these posts. Yes, our hotel does have internet but they charge you for it by the hour… and its just the principle of the thing. So a block and a half walk to Micky D’s is in the cards in the morning. Hope things go smooth with access on the boat so I can get regular posts up over the next few days.

A tale of Two Cyclones!

Good News! Donna and I beat Hurricane … er… Cyclone Ului to Cairns Australia!
I left home and headed for JFK airport to begin an almost 30 hour series of flights to Cairns Australia. I have to say the the Qantas airlines people were great. The food was good and we flew a 747, so even in coach it was reasonable comfortable. BUT…… spending that amount of time in an airplane was a bit tough. Five hours to LA, two hour layover, Fourteen hours to Sydney, another two hour layover but this time customs and a change to the domestic side of Sydney airport instead of just sitting around, and then another 3 hours flight to Cairns. I did meet some very nice people but I think I would rather have met Mr. Spock…. Next time just BEAM ME OVER THERE!
When I arrived at the Hotel Donna had already spent a day in Cairns. She had our dinner and show reservations already made. I had vowed not to sleep until at least 9pm, but knew I would never be able to stay awake for the show, so I grabbed a power nap before heading out. We saw a magician named Sam Powers, sat second row in a very small theater and had a great time. Here is a picture from our hotel balcony of the Casino that the show was in.

Sometimes Life Just Happens!

I have been into Scuba Diving for most of my life. My Dad was crazy into the sport and taught me when I was very young. He bought a small tank about a foot long that was just the right size for me and tossed me off the end of the dock at Lake George NY. When I was in my late teens, I took a PADI certification course and started diving New Jersey shipwrecks. Then it was off to the Caribbean and other "clear water" locations. Fortunately for me, my wife Donna, and now my son Alex, also love to scuba dive. And, for years, it has been a dream of ours to dive the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Last week Donna got the news that she has to go to Sydney Australia on a business trip. Hmmmm.... Sydney is only a 3 hour flight from Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, so why not go now?

And that is why we (just Donna and me, i am afraid) are headed to the Great Barrier Reef to spend a week aboard the "Spirit of Freedom dive boat. We board on March 22nd. And for the following week will be diving with Potato Codfish and Sharks.

I hope you all enjoy following along. My camera is all set and I plan to post the best pictures. Donna will be guest blogging now and again as evidenced by the huge uptick in writing quality and absence of spelling errors. I will post again in a few days with some more information about the dives we expect to do. Hope you all enjoy the trip and thanks for putting up with me! :-)

Atlantis

We had a great first dive with about 80 feet max and almost an hour bottom time. At this site, called Atlantis and very near to the windsufing school, we were in for more of the same. About 70 feet, again for almost an hour. This is another White Spotted Filefish.

This fish was actually pretty big (maybe 2 feet) but the coral he was swimming by was even bigger so he looks like a regular-sized fish. No identification on this one.

This balloon fish was very aggrevating (they allegedly puff up when threatened but I've never seen that happen). He kept us company along the reef but always just out of reach of a close-up. If we swam faster, so did he.

What's that thing in the reef with the big shiny teeth - it's a Moray!

Believe it or not, this is called a Flamingo Tongue nudibranch. They are only a couple of inches long and a bit hard to find.

Dinner anyone? Actually, someone beat us to it. This has got to be the biggest lobster we've ever seen.

Well, that does it for diving on Bonaire. Tomorrow we head for home.

Last Dives on Bonaire!

Guest Blogger...Donna!
Our 2nd to last dive was at White Slave. There are tiny (I mean tiny) concrete 5'x 3' huts that the slaves used to sleep in back in the day before they automated salt removal from the island flats. Now the mountains of salt travel by conveyor belt right out to the sea where they are dumped into cargo boats for transport, processing and your local grocer.

This black angel fish had no fear at all and seemed to want to hold a conversation.

After hardly seeing any morays during the week we ran across three or four black spotted morays today. That was a good thing because the population had a blight last fall and the morays took a big hit. This guy was a real cutie.

Another spotted Eagle Ray swam by. They like to cruise up and down the reef looking for something interesting to see...kind of what we do too.

You may think these are coral growing out of the sand but they are really garden eels that come up out of their holes and wave around hoping something tasty swims by. This is actually known as an 'eel garden' and there were dozens of them in this garden.

When you swim too close they get shy and retreat into their hole. Alex used the zoom on the camera to get this picture of these two peeking out to see if we were gone yet.

I think this is a yellow perch. Gregg likes to photograph these guys.

This one looked like the younger brother to the big moray we saw at the other end of the reef.

Today was also flounder day. We saw three of them in a row. They are hard to spot since they are completely flat (except for their googly eyes) and change color to camoflauge with the the sea floor. I chased one around for a while...thinking of how good he would taste for dinner... and Alex almost stepped on this one as we were exiting the dive.

And here is a picture of our trusty truck and the slave huts. I told you they were small.

At the end of this dive it was about 9am, we need to wait about an hour before diving our last dive of the trip. That dive will be at Atlantis.

Hilma Hooker

After showering off the salt back at the Inn.... Alex and I decided to head back out to dive the Hilma Hooker again. Our mission was to get some ego shots around the wreck. When we pulled up there was a German couple just finishing up the dive. I asked how the vis was and they said good. I guess they are used to diving in some crappy water because the visability was not that good. Less than a few days ago when we dove here. We did manage to get some good shots though.

I lowered myself into a closed hatchway for this shot.

And we did some near the prop as well.

The water was a bit stirred up but these came out pretty well. We headed up the reef to finish the dive. Max depth was 80 and we only planned to stay around 30 minutes total. On the way up the reef I was chasing an Angel fish trying to get a decent picture of him... he swam over some coral and a turtle was coming the other way.

So, with the Angel fish forgotten, We spent about 5 minutes shooting this little guy.

He was a juvenile loggerhead. About 15 inches long in total from beak to the tips of his back flippers.

At first he seems a bit distressed at all the attention. He even got hung up in some soft coral. It would have been easy to reach out and catch him, but I didn't have the heart. I think that might be illegal here too.

After a while he kind of got used to us and was even a bit curious.

This little guy definitely made our dive! After this we went back and did a night dive off the Carib Inn and then watched some TV and dranks some Corona's with lime. I always used to make fun of my cousin Matt because he likes Corona's ... now they are kind of growing on me.

All for now... it's about 6:30 on Friday, time to get the gear going for our final day of diving.