SHARK!

Hate to say it but I am pretty sure my reality can beat up your reality, especially after this last week.  Erin arrived at the hostel and it was wonderful catching up with such a good friend.  Robbie (a Canadian that acts like a stereotypical damn yank) had caught a nice 3-kilo Coral Trout and we saved it for the first full day of Erin’s arrival.  I cooked it by drizzling it with coconut milk then adding parsley, curry, colander powdered with a bit of salt and pepper then throwing it on the grill.  It came out delicious especially with the peanut curry sweet potatoes and coconut milk rice and made a proper tropical feed for us here at the Northern Green House hostel.

After a few days Erin and I took off on a 4 night dive expedition aboard the SpoilSport dive boat operated by Mike Ball Dive Expeditions.   It was an amazing boat with an awesome crew.  I have never seen so many people so happy to go to work as the crew on SpoilSport.  Erin and I dove with dive instructor Shea as I was new to the diving world and it had been over a year since Erin dove.  The dive went great although I went through my air a bit fast but Shea worked with me and gave me lots of good tips that really helped the rest of the trip.  The first day was filled with amazing coral and hundreds of different fish of all shapes and sizes and colors.  Beautiful Butterfly fish and buffalo head Parrot fish to small reef sharks and heaps of “Nemo” fish made it an amazing day and that night I went on my first night dive.  At night the giant Trevally and Red Bass have learned to use divers and their lights to hunt the cute little fishies we are trying to see.  You would find a cute colorful Angelfish and there would be a flash of silver and a 10 kilo Trevally would have supper.  Literally we had a swarm of 30-40 massive predator fish following us around the whole dive.  At one point I saw a huge Moray eel which of course had no problem scaring away the Trevally’s and bass and a beautiful Lion fish who was well protected by its poisonous spines.

The next morning I woke up to a quick cup of coffee for a morning dive that was even better than the days previous.  The water was even clearer the closer we got to the Coral Sea and had an absolutely amazing dive.  After surfacing I helped myself to an amazing breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns and more delicious things that I have lived without for so long.  A quick nap in the sun on the top deck to help digestion then back in the water again!  It was absolutely amazing to dive with Erin, but as with most people communication can sometimes get a little difficult and being underwater only compounded it.  Despite our limited form of communication by hand signals Erin performed wonderfully and at one point even conveyed her wishes for me to go fornicate with a shark.

That afternoon we went to a special part of the reef where the dive boat does a weekly “Shark Feed” where they sit all of us down on some coral then release 4 tuna heads chained to a float and we get to watch 30+ sharks tear into the tuna creating this massive ball of carnivorous sharks thrashing and tearing at each other and the tuna.  Easily one of the best 30 minutes of my life as I leaned as close as I could getting some amazing pictures and watching a 9 ft shark thrash and convulse its entire body creating enough power to tear the tuna to shreds while 20 other sharks try to join in.  After the last shreds were consumed and the sharks dissipated Erin swam to the rock where the tuna was tied to and started to look for sharks teeth (she found 5) and I swam after a couple sharks getting even more great pictures then went back and found one shark tooth.  My nephews may not appreciate it yet but someday I hope they love the fact that my Christmas present to them is a tooth from a shark I actually swam with :)

Later that evening we went for a night dive along a coral wall not far from the shark feed.  With a gentle current the crew dropped us off half a click up current from the boat so we could enjoy a nice gentle float through dusk into night along a beautiful coral wall.  Erin and I went in and floated along side-by-side with Erin close to the coral and myself between her and the “blue” where we could see a few green eyes swimming along with us.  It was a beautiful dive as we got to see the Butterfly fish and Parrot fish just as they were settling down for the evening then as night fell the nocturnal hunting fish came out.  Including sharks :D   A few largish grey sharks swam along us in the blue and one cute little White Tipped Reef Shark (only 1.5 meters long) swam right up to me.  A little while later he surprised Erin by coming up behind her and swam right between her and the reef wall at which point Erin simply grabbed me and threw me between herself and the shark that was going to “chomp” on her.  Of course her frantic actions scared George (that’s what I named the cute little guy) and he went swimming away into the dark and I followed Erin back to the boat.  Of all times to find when to find out where I stand with Erin it had to end up with her trying to feed me to the sharks :)

The next day anchored at Shark Reef at the southern end of Osprey Reef where we had been diving the last day.  A small group was guided down to the bottom of a wall where I hit my new record of 100 feet below sea level and was overjoyed to find even more sharks on this dive.  At one point I counted 15 grey and white tipped sharks swimming below us.  Bec our guide had brought an empty pop bottle and when she rolled it in her hands it made an interesting crinkling sound that most sharks have never heard before and brought in even more of the cute little devils.  It’s a trick that works great at places that don’t get too many divers and it was a great dive because of it. 

A few hours later Erin and I jumped in for our last dive of the trip.  We stayed on top of the reef wall and by far it was the greatest dive of the trip.  We saw all the cool fish of the reef with the exception of Manta Rays and an eel.  We were very sad to leave the reef and say goodbye to all the cute little sharkies that circled us as we did our decompression rest before boarding the boat for the last time. 

That night we had a great barbeque on board and had lots of laughs with the crew going over pictures from the trip.  By 10:00 I was passed out in my bunk without even crawling under the covers after 3 intense days of diving.  The next morn we said goodbye to the wonderful crew and took the dingy to Lizard Island where we caught a small plane back to Cairns.  A beautiful one hour flight over the reef that we spent so much time enjoying was a great end to the trip and truly impressed on me how massive the Great Barrier Reef truly is.  At times you could watch the reef follow the curve of the horizon as it flowed along the edge of the earth.  

                                                                A truly amazing week.

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