Swimming in the (not-so) deep blue sea

Imagine heading out to sea for almost 2 hours in a boat. As the mountains behind you fade away and the whole horizon begins to fill up with sea, suddenly you see a line of waves breaking as though on a beach. You look down into the water, and you can see the bottom — the water is only a few meters deep.

That’s how it is was as we approached the outer part of the Great Barrier Reef.

We spent an incredible two and half days on board the Kangaroo Explorer — a “liveaboard” boat that had anywhere from 15 to 25 guests on board.  It is a floating hotel, with guests arriving and departing each day on a smaller boat. For under $1000, we got two nights lodging, 7 meals, and the opportunity to go snorkelling 10 times in the space of 72 hours. And the snorkeling wasn’t all in the same place. Each day the boat moved to another part of the reef: we visited “Club 10” and “Three Sisters” and “the Whale” on the Milln Reef, and then “360” off Thetford Reef.

We only had a camera phone in a waterproof case, so our photos can’t do justice to the incredible variety of coral and fish we saw. I (Marsha) was humbled by not only the variety of corals, but the sheer mass of coral. In some areas, the coral creates a wide “wall” with a large flat area with only a small amount of water above it (less than a meter, depending on tide). In other places, there are “bommies” — large pillars of coral that rise dramatically up from the sea floor, rather like Devil’s Tower protruding from the prairie in Wyoming.

 

Because the water was quite calm and visibility was an amazing 20 meters, we could swim over the tops of these bommies (another Aussie shortening of the word bombara, which means a hidden reef) and see the sunlight dappling across the corals and fish, or we could swim around the edges and see the steep cliffs, covered with different types of coral. Over thousands of years, as the sea waters rose, fresh coral has grown on top of old coral, creating these great towers that allow the sunlight to reach the living coral. The variety was amazing: brain coral, antler coral, stiff fan corals as large as 2-3 feet thrusting out from the main mass of coral, undulating soft coral that looked like asparagus leaves swaying in the wind, black coral, pink coral, bright yellow coral, and several peculiar corals that looked quite solid, but upon closer inspection were covered with tiny undulating whiskers. A magnificent show.

(Although our camera didn’t capture color well under water, these videos give just a glimmer of what it actually felt like to swim at the edge of a bommie:

• https://photos.app.goo.gl/zE5SLD0pIvBtnApC3
• https://photos.app.goo.gl/ytAgDD3qBknqptSh2

Of course, there was more than just coral to look at. In one place we looked down 10 meters or so and saw a white-tipped reef shark skimming the bottom. In another we saw a green turtle chewing away at the coral and then serenely flippering away to another bommie. There were angel fish, groupers, damsel fish, giant clams, multicoloured parrot fish, and many many more. My favorite sight was a gathering of bright yellow fish with big yellow lips just hovering in one area, presumably being “cleaned” by smaller fish. No matter which way we turned, we were surrounded by beautiful life.

We did one introductory scuba dive, donning all of the gear, learning the various hand signals so we could communicate, and then going down to a depth of about 3 meters to practice clearing our masks of water, and removing the air regulator from our mouths, putting it back in, and clearing it of water before breathing in again. (That was the scariest maneuver — I couldn’t help wonder what I was going to do if I breathed in water and started coughing!)

We eventually did a bit of swimming with our instructor towing us along to keep us at the correct depth, but both Mike and I found we were so immersed in becoming comfortable with breathing and concentrating on watching our leader for instructions that we didn’t have the opportunity to really enjoy the view.  We decided that we enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere of snorkeling better for the time being, but were glad to have had the opportunity to scuba.

We were on the boat for two nights, and the second night the waves began to roll us about just a bit. Not enough to make us seasick, but enough to remind us that we were on a constantly shifting ocean that both batters and nurtures the Great Barrier Reef and has been reshaping this edge of a continent for millennia.  We know that climate change is affecting this great collection of life. We are saddened at the thought that seven generations from now, the great barrier reef may no longer be home to such a great explosion of life.