Adrian's Amazing Reef Scuba Adventure

While I haven't officially made a bucket list yet, if I did have one "Scuba Dive the Great Barrier Reef" would definitely be on it. Well, I'm happy to announce that as of a few days ago, I can officially cross that off of my list, and the experience certainly lived up to my expectations.

Last year I got my PADI open-water scuba diving certification in Honduras, and really enjoyed it. This time around, I did a course to get my advanced open water certification, which allows me to go down to 100 feet (the limit before was 60 feet), as well as giving me a lot more general scuba experience. I decided to go on a 3-day, 2-night live-aboard scuba dive trip with Pro-Dive. This is definitely the way to go - it enables you to get to the outer reef (which is prettier / healthier), and you do a huge amount of diving - basically all our time was spent eating, sleeping, or diving. Sounds like my kind of schedule!

Over 3 days we did a series of 11 dives. Of those 11 dives we had 5 specific dives to do for the certification: night, deep, and navigation diving as the core requirements, and then I chose the naturalist and underwater photography dives as my 2 electives. Underwater photography was my favorite because the instructor found all the good photo subjects for us and helped us get good shots (see below). Night diving was also a lot of fun, but definitely a bit freaky to be down there in the dark. Especially when they fed the sharks right before our second night dive, and then we hopped in to dive with them!

Besides the fact that the reef itself was amazing, everything else was awesome. We left Cairns to gray skies and a forecast of 3 days of rough seas and rain, but ended up with amazing sunny weather. The staff was very knowledgeable / helpful, the cook was excellent, and all the other divers were a ton of fun. (Special shout-out to my dive buddy / fellow Advanced Dive Course participant Alan, and to Lori the Queen of getting into the water first. I definitely had a blast, and am officially addicted to diving - can't wait to get back underwater in Southeast Asia!

On to the photos! All the photos were taken by me (except the ones I'm in) - check out my newly acquired underwater photography skills!!

swimmin' along

sea turtle!

me and an anemone fish

me with a giant clam - this definitely came out a lot better than the picture of me snorkeling with a giant clam - scuba is certainly superior!

Sharks! On the second night they fed the sharks, and then sent us into the water 15 min later. Crazy! Very cool to swim with the sharks, though.

sunning on the top deck of the boat in-between dives. Man, it's a rough life. . .

a school of bumphead parrotfish. These guys are HUGE and there were like 30of them. You could hear the chomping on coral from a long way off. Check out those beaks - I was very glad to know that they are vegetarians!

a bunch of humbug damsels hanging out by their coral home

I found Nemo!

a buespotted lagoon ray glides along the water - very cool to see them swim

me hanging out with a sea turtle - too bad the picture came out so fuzzy!

extreme closeup of a Christmas Tree worm. If you snapped your finger near these guys they would retreat into their hole, just like those bioluminescent plants did in Avatar. . . very amusing

posing with some cool coral

shovel nosed ray! I actually thought this was a shark at the time, but it just looks like one.

enjoying a quiet moment on the top deck as the sun sets. Life is good.