The Great Barrier Reef

Flying into Lady Elliot Island

When I was 15 and attending Seacamp, we had a visiting science speaker from Australia who gave a talk on the Great Barrier Reef. Ever since then I have longed to see it. Forty years later, I finally made the trip. What the heck took me so long? Rhetorical question, of course!

For our first experience diving on the reef we visited Lady Elliot Island, a small island 80 km off the Queensland coast. It's the very southern part of the reef and the closest to Brisbane. Accessible only by plane, it feels like an adventure just getting out there. The short runway pretty much bisects the island which makes for fast take offs and landings.

Noddie and fledgling

The first thing you notice when you get off the plane are the white-capped noddies. They are everywhere... on the ground, in the trees, and on the buildings, I expected to see them underwater! Their name comes from the nodding behavior that they do in the breeding season. These seabirds use this tiny speck of an island for nesting (hard to nest at sea). They also have a lot to say about that nesting, the sound of their activities permeates the island, increasing during the evening as the birds return from fishing at sea. We watched streams of them coming in during the sunset and dusk. They are accompanied by mutton birds who are stopping over on their way south. Mutton birds make an amazing migration from Tasmania to Japan and Alaska and then returning, some 15,000 km. Their night sounds were first described to us as babies crying. So between the noddies and the mutton birds, it's a very dominate evening sound track, particularly in the evening. We found that they usually settled down for an hour between 3-4 am.  But after that first day of diving, we didn't hardly notice them and slept like babies.

Teaming with life

Mother nature did not disappoint: the diving around Lady Elliot was fantastic. The island is surrounded by coral bommies on the west side and has a wall on the more exposed east side. And very easy access, every site is within 5-10 minute boat ride. We were lucky to have a few calm days at the beginning that allowed us to get around to the east side wall. Every dive consisted of lush corals, tons of tiny fish, loads of big stuff like sharks, rays, groupers (as big as me!) and too many turtles to count. The days were spent diving in the AM and then trying to ID all the many things we saw and then repeating the process in the afternoon. Needless to say, our week flew by.

As always, it's the people who make a place really special. The dive staff, Nikki, Alesh, Ryan along with their great boat drivers, Phil, Simmo (number 10!) and others made our diving easy, safe and filled with great sitings. They know these reefs so well and where critters can usually be found. Wonderful guests as well, we had the pleasure of diving with the hilarious duo, Donna and Fiona, lifelong friends from Adelaide and then Phil and Amy Townsing and with their kids, Brook, Sam and Brendon. All great divers. Their friends Diana and Westy from Melbourne rounded out a great crew. Luckily for us, Phil and Westy had GoPro cameras and shared some great video footage.

Heaps of big fish, photo courtesy of Westy,

and heaps of wee fish

The giant mantas of Lady Elliot are really the star of the show. When one of these amazing and large rays (wingspan 6-8 feet!) came into our diving vicinity, we would all go to the bottom and wait. These beautiful creatures would eventually swim up to the bommie (coral head) and pick up some cleaning fish, then keep circling it as fish dropped off in order to pick up more. They would soar over us in the process, so graceful and etherial. Phil Townsing captured a beautiful video (below) and I have trimmed it down to fit on this blog. Be sure and use the full screen mode. (this may not appear in IOS devices like iphone and ipad, sorry!)

How about that? A video shows a thousand words. Thank you Phil.

Now we are in up north of Cairns in the wet tropical north Queensland. It feels very lush and remote up here. After this week on land, we will join the Spoilsport in Cairns for another week diving on the outer parts of the Great Barrier Reef!