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Around Cairns

Since we were in Australia we would have been foolish to not dive the Great Barrier Reef! We had to pass through Cairns on the way to Palau anyway and Cairns is one of the top cities that divers use a base to explore the Reef.

One of the things about the Reef here versus reefs in other places I've been is that it's VERY far from shore. Using one of the operators with fast boats it's usually around 2 hours EACH WAY! Several people recommended that a live-a-board is the only good way to experience the Great Barrier Reef as they can get to the better and more remote locations as well as offer more than just two dives a day.

Since we did a live-a-board in Palau just the previous week and we only had about 3 days in Cairns we decided to just stick to a land based operator. Our travel agent recommended Tusa Dive based out of Cairns. They have relatively small boats with 20-30 divers, where some operators take over 200 divers and snorkelers on one boat. Talk about cattle boat!

Besides the diving, we also enjoyed the local cuisine which was very good with extensive selections of moderately priced seafood. We also spent our off-gassing day visiting Kuranda. Lily's friend Melanie met us in Cairns and dove with us and went to Kuranda with us then dove one extra day with another operator the day we left. We stayed at the Tradewinds Esplanade hotel which is just a couple blocks from the center of town and all the restaurants. The tour operators pick you up from your hotel.
Click on thumbnail for a full-size picture

View from our balcony, apparently at low tide.
View down the Esplanade where the stops and restaurants are.

The Diving

We dove with Tusa Dive which offers two tank dives out of Cairns. The trip is around 2 hours long with snacks and beverages available at all times. They provide equipment as well which we found nearly everybody except us took advantage of. Their equipment was mostly Tusa equipment not surprisingly with Uwatec dive computers attached to the gauge console.

Some of the weird stuff about their equipment is they keep the octo attached to a rubber band on the tank. That seems to be a poor choice as somebody needing to share air would have to go behind a diver to get the octo. The other thing is the gauge console was on a long cord and not attached to the BCD at all. Most divers just let the console hang beneath them which of course meant they were also bumping into the coral.

Besides that we found the staff to be very young, energetic and fairly helpful. The divemasters/guides did not go out of their way to make sure all the divers had a good time. They tended to spend more time watching the inexperienced divers than finding interesting wildlife for us. On one dive we wasted the first 5 minutes of the dive waiting on the sandy bottom while the divemaster helped the novices having trouble descending. Plus, they do ask that you pay extra if you want to dive with a guide, otherwise you're on your own after the dive briefing.

Unfortunately there were several things we didn't like about Tusa Dive. First of all, there were between 20 to 30 guests on the boat, most of them were either snorkelers or intro to scuba divers. The trick we figured out was to get in the water as soon as possible before the intro divers stir up the sand. Second of all, and probably even more annoying, is they use small tanks. We were told they were 72 cu ft tanks but they seemed smaller than that. Not only do you spend 2 hours to get out to the dive site but with the smaller tank you get reduced bottom time! How annoying! On the second day we found out you can reserve an 80 cu ft tank and pay extra if you choose, but that was on our last day already.
Click on thumbnail for a full-size picture

Tusa Dive runs two identical dive boats like this.
We spent the long trip out snacking and talking to other divers.
Melanie, Lily and myself.

Melanie and Lily suited up. Notice Lily's snorkel.
Viewed: 1 time.
A rare shot of Lily and myself.
Melanie taking a nap on the way back.

If you ever wondered what the reef looked like from above water.

I took quite a lot of underwater pictures here but unlike in Palau I used regular print film instead. The following are some of my better pictures from this portion of our trip. You can see quite a few more pictures in my Dive Log. By clicking on the underwater pictures below you will be sent to the dive log entry for the dive that picture was taken. There you will be able to view larger versions of the pictures as well as read about the dive.

We also have video taken by the on-board videographer that I captured and put on-line in both QuickTime and Real Video formats. All four dives we did here have some video. Go to the Dive Log for dives 112 thru 115 to view the video.
Click on thumbnail to view dive log.

Another view of the Cuttlefish.
Viewed: 91 times.
More: Dive 112
A Giant Clam. That's Lily's arm right behind it for an idea of the scale.
Viewed: 200 times.
More: Dive 112
This site had a lot of fine examples of Mushroom Coral similar to this.
Viewed: 78 times.
More: Dive 113

A much better shot of the large Tunicate.
Viewed: 83 times.
More: Dive 113
I managed to get pretty close to that huge Pufferfish.
Viewed: 102 times.
More: Dive 114
Gotta love macro, this is some sort of soft coral that we saw all over this site.
Viewed: 34 times.
More: Dive 114

Wally the Napoleon Wrasse coming up to the boat for a snack.
Viewed: 297 times.
More: Dive 115
Here is the Whitetip Reef Shark that kept swimming around us the entire dive.
Viewed: 165 times.
More: Dive 115

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