Uncle Traveling Matt: Finding Nemo

July 7, 2006

Finding Nemo

Nemo

Today I headed out to the Reef with Quicksilver, on their Silver Sonic high speed catamaran to do some snorkelling. Apparently most of the good fish and coral are in the first 2 metres, so not doing the diving wasn't the end of the world. They have those foam noodle things as well, so you can focus on the fish rather than staying a float, lol.

The boat departs from Port Douglas about an hour north of Cairns, so I had to be up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am to catch the connecting bus! However the sun rise over the ocean was well worth it, as you can see from the photo!

Sunrise at the Northern Beaches, Cairns

The ride out to the outer reef (Agincourt Ribbon Reef) was rough as guts, due to 30 knot winds, and almost everyone was sea sick on the 1.5hour trip, myself included. We visited 3 sites, the first of which was the best, because at the later two the sea was quite rough and their weren't as many fish. Some people diving saw turtles and reef sharks at these, however by this stage I was having hard enough time not getting blown into the coral by the wind (you aren't allowed to touch it)—I've also got a sneaking suspicion the turtles might of been gone deeper to avoid all those pesky snorkellers!

For the trip I hired a professional underwater diving camera (7.1 mega pixel/underwater flash/rated to 40 meters) from a place called "Wet Resolution" back in Cairns. I'd found them by accident the day before (their shop is just down from the bus terminus for Palm Cove) and decided it was a good idea since a crappy disposable was $25 for grainy film, 27 shots and no flash and this camera for $60/day for up to 500 photos including putting them on CD-ROM. As you can see from the photos it was money well spent!

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Posted by Matt at July 7, 2006 9:13 PM