This past weekend, I finally made a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to do some diving! I stayed aboard the Kalinda for 2 days with a group of about 18 people, plus dive staff and boat crew, and dove Wheeler Reef, acclaimed to be one of the best reefs around. It was a rough 5 hour overnight trip to the area, but the rest of the weekend was great. I got 4 dives in, and a total of 3 hours and 33 minutes of dive time.

A badillion different kinds of coral, all in one place!

Diving here is so different from diving in Oregon! You don't have to wear an inch-thick suit of Neoprene armor to face freezing cold water, which means you don't have to wear nearly as much weight to off-set your bouyancy, and you can actually see things that are more than a meter away from you! Visibility changes the experience entirely. That sounds blatantly obvious, but really, it's a whole different sensation.

My dive partner, Krissy, and me. Photo by Claudia Frey.

Posted by Whitney 03/31/2008