Quick Stats:
Location: Holmes Reef (mostly) Coral Sea
13 day dives and 2 night dives
Water Temp: 25-26°c
Deepest dive: 59.5m (personal record)
Full Album: http://imgur.com/a/RnfPX
After last years impressive trip to the Ribbon Reef aboard the Rum Runner Kelly had enough interest to organise another voyage out. This time heading past the Great Barrier Reef, off the continental shelf, to Holmes Reef in the Coral Sea. Approximately 220km East of Cairns.
It started like so many other dive trips, with a beer at the Brisbane Airport. It wasn't long before Nic, Marie, Julie, Kelly and I boarded our Friday arvo flight to Cairns. I was all the way down the back of the plane... the only person seated in the last 2 rows. Plenty of room to stretch out. Took me a little bit longer to get off the plane though, some tourists seemed to spend a good 15min trying to wrestle their bags out of the overhead locker. I had the music in and was determined to catch up to the others at the baggage claim... so determined it seems that I power walked straight past them as they waited for me near the plane exit! (Sorry guys)
We grabbed our bags and sat down at a coffee shop to wait for the Garys and Kirrily to come on their later flights. About 15min later the Garys turned up and a further 15-20 for Kirrily to land. Once all together we hopped in a Maxi and headed straight to the Marina to drop off our bags. There wasn't any crew on the boat at the time, but it was all open so we stowed our bags safely, placing some random objects to claim our beds and started to make our way to our accommodation for the night, the Northern Greenhouse. We made it maybe 200m down the road but the allure of the Pier Bar was too strong and we made our first pit stop. The food looked good so we stayed a bit longer and ended up having dinner. After finally making our way to our rooms it was only a few min before we were ready to head out again, this time heading into PJs for a quiet beverage... or 2. A few of us kicked on to Gilligans for a round of pool and a final nightcap before turning in.
I woke up fairly early the next morning and snuck out of the room for breakfast. The backpackers has a pretty good kitchen, free cereal and toast etc etc. The others eventually rose and made something that resembled coffee (at least it turned the water brown) while Nic decided to go off in search of Bacon for his breakfast. Shortly after we made our way to the boat. As we were setting up our tanks and gear the rest of the URGQ consort arrived consisting of Alan R, Coralie, Kerry, James, Mack and Ash. Crew was busy getting the ship ready to sail while we buzzed about sorting our gear but eventually we set off. The weather wasn't looking good though, and Rum Runner is notorious for being a little bit rocky...
We made it to Millian Reef in pretty good time, despite the weather, and were lucky enough to fit in a checkout dive before heading further out to sea. It was a fairly 'shallow' (for here) site bottoming out on the sand at about 25m. Great Vis and all the usual reef life to see. Kelly found a nice Flat Worm perched on some coral, while I was still trying to figure out my new camera and all it's fancy settings... it's a work in progress.
Flat Worm perched on some coral
Amazing visibility on every dive!
After our dive we set off once again. Under poor weather and outside the protection of the Barrier Reef we hit some really rough seas. A few were feeling pretty ill, including myself, and it wasn't too long before I was holding a rail and expelled the contents of my stomach. A bit of water to wash out my mouth and quickly lying down in bed I was feeling a lot better, but wasn't going to move for a while. A few other people followed suit through the night. As the night wore on I found myself woken by the roll of the boat only moments before falling out of bed. Lucky I was able to catch myself, others didn't quite have the same luck. With the rain, swell, wind and ocean spray there was also a lot of water running down the deck of the boat. Some finding it's way onto beds making it even more uncomfortable. Compared to some reports, I had a pretty decent nights sleep.....
I was awake and on deck by about 5:30am. When there's no chance of falling back asleep I get up and out to the fresh air or things generally turn down hill... It was only about an hour later before we were behind the protection of Holmes Reef and the seas calmed down again. In the morning we also found out that Mack had a spill while moving around at night. Big bruise on her chest from when she caught a corner as she fell. Sadly this meant she wasn't able to dive today because of the soreness, speculating that a rib may have been cracked.
We geared up for the dive and as soon as we dropped in we could see a half dozen Reef sharks. The Vis was awesome, no current, 25c and a pretty steep sandy slope off to nothingness. I took the opportunity to do my deepest ever dive. Down to 55.4m, which took me all of 3min to reach. For those playing at home Most Dive computers will start flashing "You're probably going to die soon" warnings at 1.4 pO2, which is reached at 56.7m. And generally "Yep, you so dead now" with 1.6 pO2 at ~66m. I didn't stay down long (only enough time to take in the surroundings and snap a picture) before slowly working my way back up. There are sharks to see down here, but on the reef most things are above the 25m mark anyway. There were some cool Garden eels at ~32m... but smallish White eels on white sand when most of the Red light has been filtered out by the water = a mostly blue and rather boring photo that looks like nothing but sand...
Here Sharkey Sharkey
Down down, Divers are Down!
The other 3 day dives were pretty cool. Not really any big schools of fish, which is surprising considering the location. Hard to find some of the smaller Macro life too. Heaps of coral but it seems a bit duller, especially when compared to the Ribbon reefs last year. One thing the Coral Sea does have though is sharks, and plenty of them. A little White Tip Reefy got a little close and personal, doing a few laps of me before coming in for a closer look...
A much closer look!
On the last dive Richie (the Skipper) took down a Tuna Head and tied it off to a weight while we all sat back and watched. After a few circling sharks a bigger one came out to play, my first ever Tiger Shark! It was pretty impressive. Fast moving and looked like it was on a mission. After scoping the head out for a bit, it swam close, flicked up the sand, then turned and took the head under cover. Seeing it intentionally cast up a screen of sand before attacking was really cool. Would not want to be on the menu for these guys.
Tiger Shark. Cloud of fury.
The night dive was pretty good too, but I even love night diving if I don't see anything. There was plenty of shrimp, a few Moray eels ready to hunt, a Painted cray and a pretty big Ray getting about. Saw a few sharks off in the distance (glowing Green Eyes) but none came too close. Sleeping tonight was much easier than last night, behind the reef the boat didn't rock much at all. Some people found the mattresses are a little lacking, but after years of camping on similar, or worse, I found them fine.
Day 3 of diving was much of the same. Big impressive walls, mostly bland coral but some colourful bits, plenty of sharks and not too much Macro to shoot. I did manage to find a really small Nudibranch though, it was only about 3mm long and I couldn't focus on it with my camera unfortunately. I think I need a Macro lenses. Another thing about the sites out here is that there are plenty of nooks and crannies. Lots of Valleys and overhands and swim throughs. Some good cave areas but all well lit through sunlight through holes in the roof. Great for swimming through.
The arvo dive was also a shark feed dive, all the remaining tuna heads put on a spike and lowered after we were in position. It was all over in a few min with at least 15 sharks in the vicinity. Plenty of scraps left over for other fish to enjoy as well. Didn't see a Tiger today though, just Silver Tip (the bigger ones) and White Tip Reef Sharks. Once again I enjoyed the night dive, despite not really seeing much. I did manage to find a couple of spider crabs amongst the other crustaceans though, which posed on a bit of coral for a few shots.
Silver Tip Reef Shark
The next morning Alan, Nick, Ash and I decided to have another deeper dive. Apparently this sight had a vertical drop of over 1000m... We weren't going quite that far though. Dropping straight down from the edge of the boat we passed some really large Fan Corals on our way. My computer started beeping at 57 and I arrested my decent at 59.5. Hung about a little longer than the other day and quickly worked up a little bit of Deco time. We slowly made our ascent up the wall stopping to enjoy the Fan Coral we passed by before. Sharks again off in the blue and s few other fish and things hanging closer to the wall. When we reached about ~25m I ducked around a ledge and couldn't see Ash, I made my way back to see what was going on to see him with his BCD half off. As I started to swim towards him to see what was up/make sure he wasn't narked he waved me off. Apparently he had a spare/backup computer strapped to his BCD, that he could no longer find. Not much we could do here, we continued to the surface. All our deco time was worked off on our slow ascent so we didn't have to do any mandatory stops, just our usual safety stop. Once back on the boat Ash found his computer, with a sigh of relief, it was in the bucket right next to his tank holder.
To the murky depth below!
As a last ditch effort to try set it self above the Ribbon Reefs the Coral Sea chucked out something pretty special on the last day, a Whale Shark! This wasn't a small one either, it must have been 8-9 meters. It didn't hang around for long before disappearing off into the blue but it was very cool to see one again. Very unexpected.
Last dive for the trip started off really well with a school of Barracuda greeting me as I dropped off the boat. Few more white Nudibranch... really hard to take a picture of. They're small and hard to focus on... and dull without a flash and over exposed with one...
With all the diving done and dusted it was time to head back. This time, luckily, we were heading with the wind and the seas weren't anywhere near as rough. Rolling with the waves, full sails flying made for a quicker than expected trip home and we pulled into Cairns harbour early morning. We were able to leave all our gear out on the boat to dry out before most people flew home. I plan to stay in Cairns to see out the week. My Brother+SIL live up here, with my nephew, so I always tack on a few days to any Cairns trip for a bit of family time. The others had a late arvo flight (so they had 24hrs after their last dive, before flight) so we wound up back at the pier bar to pass some time and have some lunch. Mack and James went straight to the Hospital for an X-ray. Doctor said it felt cracked, but X-ray was inconclusive. Wrote a script for some pain meds and said Mack was safe to fly.
Mack has been an absolute Trooper on this trip. Cracked Rib on the first night but wasn't sour or grumpy, despite quite a good reason to be so. Big thanks to Kelly for organising another great Trip, can't wait for the next!
