REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF

I have concluded that the worst place in the world to learn how to dive is the Great Barrier Reef.

This is because the second you descend underwater, you are surrounded by incredibly colourful fish and corals and you just want to look at everything, but instead you have to kneel in a stupid semi-circle underwater and take off your mask a lot. We still did manage to see heaps, though. These huge fish kept swimming around us to check us out and they loved our bubbles. They would lie on their sides and let the bubbles hit them; I think they liked the tickling. There was one particularly large one that would just sit in the middle of our circle, and the dive instructor had to keep pushing him away. If you have never seen someone try to push a fish, it is quite humorous.

We were also interrupted once by a sea turtle that came into our semi-circle and did the Turtle Dance, where they present their shell to you and look over their ‘shoulders’. He would not leave until we had all scratched his shell. HOW CUTE.

We also saw giant clams, sting rays, and lots and lots of incredibly colourful corals and anemones and, of course, clownfish. On the boat they don’t even call them clown fish anymore; we would get back on deck and they would ask us if we had seen any ‘Nemos’.

Living on the boat was a great experience. It was awesome being surrounded by the reef. We saw lots of dolphins and every once in a while someone would yell ‘TURTLE’ and we would all crowd on the side to see a sea turtle coming up for air. It was also amazing to get back on deck and hear people talk excitedly about their dives and what they saw and did. It is so easy to sleep on a boat, too. The stars were amazing out there.

The only thing that wasn’t so fun was a dive at 6 AM, but once we got into the water it didn’t matter that we had to wake up at 5:30 because we saw so much, plus the sunrise over the water was awesome. Puffer fish, angel fish, triggerfish, sharks, corals, anemones… it was just so cool. And now I am officially a certified diver! I plan on doing some more dives on the Reef when I go sailing the Whitsundays in a week.