Kerry Sims
- Kerry Sims's trip Australia 2013
2013-02-04 - Coral Garden (Saxon Reef), Cairns, Australia
21m - 40 min - Dived with Tusa Dive
First ever dive on the Great Barrier Reef after spending many days escaping the effects of ex-cyclone Oswald. On entering the water in the stinger suit spotted an awful lot of small jellyfish and quickly put the mittens on my stinger suit properly just in case! Instantly came across a huge silver fish that followed us around for more than 10 minutes. Headed along towards the outer part of the reef with the reef on the right. Saw huge shoals of yellow-tailed fusiliers, shaded batfish, fan corals, feather stars, christmas tree worms, colourful sea squirts, long straggly sea whips and on top of the reef were gatherings of diagonal-banded sweetlips which we took a few pictures of. Saw black spotted puffer, a six-banded angelfish beneath a reef ledge and lots of parrotfish grazing near the reef top. Saw a turtle, baby reef shark and barracuda whilst snorkelling in the surface interval. Bizaarely still felt cold going through the thermoclines despite the water temperature being 28 degrees!
2013-02-04 - Coral Garden (Saxon Reef), Cairns, Australia
15m - 46 min - Dived with Tusa Dive
Swam the opposite way from the boat for the second dive towards the eel garden which I never spotted! We found a pair of Barramundi cod sitting on the sand with a cleaner wrasse hanging around, a lionfish tucked away beneath a ledge, clownfish hiding away in an anemone which I got a picture of that would have benefitted from some extra lighting and spent ages trying to get a semi-decent photo of the black-tailed humbugs before they retreated amongst the branches of the coral as they spotted me approaching. We also saw triggerfish, unicornfish, barred rabbitfish, giant clams with bright blue flesh, and a white-speckled rock cod beneath a coral ledge who looked quite mean. There were threadfin butterflyfish on the sand, and a harlequin sweetlips being tended to by a cleaner wrasse. There were also shoals of tiny silver fish that sparkled in the sunlight as you looked up at them. I found a mask and snorkel which I retrieved from the reef. I spotted a black tip reef shark out in the blue moving towards us over the sand but after getting my buddy's attention and starting to swim towards it it swam off at speed so never managed to get a picture. Having swum out into the blue we swum a little further onto a small bommie and saw the giant clams. We headed back as were running out of time. I stopped to get pictures of all the unicornfish in a huge group feeding on the reef- didn't realise quite how close we were on being late back to the boat! Saw parrotfish in the shallows before getting back to the boat just within our allocated time.
Fish weren't as abundant on this site as they had been at saxon reef. Saw Scissortail Sergeants, lined surgeonfish with yellow stripes, parrotfish, and a large shoal of fusliers with black tips on their tails. Steve found an open canyon that we swum through in turn and we found the biggest puffer i've ever seen- he was hiding under a ledge on our right but swum off with it's huge spines still folded down against it's back. Then steve spotted the opening to the tunnel cut into the reef wall. I followed him through in the knowledge that if he fitted through then I would too but it was definitely tight towards one end! It was only afterwards that I thought about how tricky it might have been for us both to reverse out in turn. We swam along the outer edge of the reef and then over the top. Once we had crossed the shallows we crossed a depression in the reef and a sting ray swam right past us. Headed back to the boat as was out of time. Spent a little more time snorkelling with the shoals of fusiliers before they recalled all the snorkellers back to the boat to head back to Cairns.
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