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The sea, the Reef and Sharks

Tuesday we spent the day looking at dive companys and tour companys to do our diving with after a thousand brouchers and a number of chats with diffrent people we decide to go with a company call Reef Quest for around 50 pounds which after a lot of umming and arring we decided that this was a great deal and went to bed early for our early start the next morning.

Wednesday we woke up at 5.45 and ok for some people thats not to early but for backpackers it is. We headed off to the pier and waited till seven thirty to board the boat which then took 90 mins to get out to an unbelievable aqua blue reef where you could just look over the edge of the boat to see what was down there. There was also a option to rent a underwater camera for an extra 35 pounds- ok expensive but it would be all my own pictures!!

We popped on our little snorkle masks and jumped in to do some snokrling whist the first few groups went and did their dives. We saw lots of little nemos and a lot of sea cucumbers and of course the amazing reef - it alone was unreal.

But then it was time to dive - so we did all our normal tution -clearing mask of water, regulator retrival etc etc and then we dived (this was my 7 dive i have done now). Once we got down to 8.9 metres with out any trouble with my ears we started to explore the reef and the dive master found a sea cucumber which he picked up and let each one of us hold. It was funny how it felt so spongy but it was really cool to hold. After this we swam around looking for alot of diffrent stuff untill again we landed on the sand and the dive master showed us these two clams which where about the size of a rugby ball and really bright green and orange but if you went near them they would slam shut. it was cool to be down on the great barrier reef no matter how many times we say it, its still hard to believe that we have done something that was once only a dream (one more thing ticked of my things to do list which i must say is starting to run a bit short) but then before we knew it, it was time to come back up and get lunch.

As soon as we got up we realised that we wanted to go down again and it was only another 15 pound each. We changed dive locations because there was alot of people wanting to dive with turtles. As soon as we anchored up people started to see STUFF so i could not start getting ready quick enouth - you know me like a kid at xmas and luckly we were one of the first ones down. This time no training needed just straight into it. We jumped in and instantly there was a 2.5 meter long white tip reef SHARK - how wicked we were there diving with sharks and then not only that but i had this under water camera we had rented so all the pics of the sharks are my own doing how cool!!
Shortly after we had a visit from more sharks until there where about 5 sharks swimimg the same reef as us i cant say how cool this felt it was an unreal experiance. Later we got a visit from Wally !!!! Now any one in the know will know who Wally is but for those who dont he is a Nepolian Wrass and about five foot long and so colourful so, again lots of pics.
Our dive master tried to get him to come close to us whilst we where kneeling onto the sand but he was more interested in what Nikki was upto and just swam right for her which even i thought might have been a little scary but of course cool.

We continued to swim around for another 20 mins before getting back to the main part of the reef where i was snapping away with the underwater camera just like David Bailay just as we were starting to wrap up another dive i spotted a moray eel like no other i have seen before. He must have had a head a foot and a half long let alone the rest of his body that we could not see. So off i went again snap happy and trigger mad leaving the dive master and swimming right next to the eel before getting asked nicely in under water signs and symbols to GET BACK HERE which i suppose i had to but only because i was running low on air!! Once we got back to the top after a 10.4 meter dive for 34 mins i was beaming ear to ear - we had dived with sharks at the great barrier reef WOW.

We were heading back to the shore and watched the video that they had been filming whist we where there which was really good but we decided it was to expensive at 50 pounds for the dvd and we both knew that we had some wicked shots on the camera

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