Day 17 - Port Douglas

Todays big trip was to head out to the reef and explore. We chose a boat that stopped at 3 different spots and gave you about 3 hours in the water. Mel chose to do a dive at one location while I opted for snorkeling at all three.

I have snorkeled at a few different places in the Caribbean and I always came away thinking that it just wasn't as colorful as it appears on TV or in photos. Now I know that I was just i the wrong places ! The reef here was as colorful as you imagine it to be. The shapes, sizes, and colours of the coral was amazing ! I'd love to show you some pictures but we didn't get a disposable underwater camera as we wanted to enjoy our time instead of worrying about taking pictures.

Jsut so you know, this is the location where the reef is closest to the mainland but it's still a one hour fast catamaran ride from shore. So you are out in the ocean pretty far. You can't really see the land from here.

The first sight was fairly shallow, I'd say about 10 - 12 meters deep. The depth was fairly constant and the coral most the most diverse here. There were tons of fish , clams, sea cucumbers, star fish, but nothing too big or scary.

Second sight was a much deeper, probably 20 meters and the coral here has formed a huge wall or cliff. At the top of the coral there was only about a meter of water and the coral is exposed to the sun at low tide. The sea life here was much the same but with the water being so much deeper there was the ever present threat of something huge showing up...but it didn't happen.

Last sight was a combination of the above two. Big wall opening up into the ocean and then varied landscapes when you went over the wall. We sal lots of cuddle fish here. Mel was keeping one eye on the open water searching for something big and when she grabbed my arm and pointed I almost didn't want to look ! Judging by her excitement it figured it was a great white ! Turned out to be a HUGE sea turtle. It was about 10 meters below us and was easliy as long as me. It just swam along the wall lazily while we smaw above it . We followed it for about 10 minutes or so until is swam back out to sea. It was the highlight of the day.

The ride back in was much rougher than the ride out and there were lots of people at the back of the boat losing thier lunch. Mel and I missed lunch as we snorkelled for the whole second stop so were not at risk of losing much.