Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef - Scuba Diving & Tropical Paradise:
Over the Barkley Highway from the Northern Territories, a straight flat road, you reach the state border to Queensland and follow one of the worst roads of the continent to Mount Isa, a small mining town in the middle of the outback, and Charters Towers to Townsville on the East Coast. As I lost confidence in my car after a few problems ( I hardly escaped from being towed away) like the clutch fork insulator and a stalling engine, I decided after debriefing a few locals to stay in Townsville to get my PADI dive certificate, leaving Cairns out. Townsville has less tourists than Cairns and the better dive options on the reef, which is closer to the coast than further north. Besides, there is the shipwreck of the MSS Yongala, sunken near the coast and one of the best shipwrecks for recreational divers.

Soon I enter the Blue Juice Safari diving school room. Michael, probably chief of the business, takes my personal data sheet and Rich is the teacher for today's theory lessons. We are three PADI candidates studying the videos and writing the synopsis and the exam to pass the theory part so that we are allowed to move on the pool part. The theory consists of five video sequences, each followed by an oral discussion, a quiz and a test. We work in a serene and casual atmosphere and have coffee and some cookies for free.

In the middle of the five lessons in the air-conditioned backroom of the diving shop in Townsville Mall we have a break that gives us also time to pass the medical exam with Dr. Logan just next door. We fill out a personal form and the medical history again and are debriefed by Dr. Bruce Logan, retired army diver and pilot. Within these ten minutes, Logan talks more than I do and the examination is easily passed. We are invited to pay AU$ 55 to get his signature and the dive approval. But who's sitting there in the waiting room? The three Dutch Minou, Freddy and Martin that I met in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek respectively. They booked a five day dive course with Prodive and wait for their medical too. They tell me that they reached Townsville (the same day as I did) at six o'clock, so I drove a very good time with a fairly bad car. Back at Blue Adrenalin we have lunch (oriental sandwiches from a local shop) and cope with the other part of the theory duty. Now it's not just behaviour and rules under water but also maths and tables of the RDP, the recreational dive planner with indications about nitrogen levels in our body after certain dive depths and times. At the end of the day we need to pass the final exam consisting of fifty multiple-choice questions. I pass with 6 of 12 allowed mistakes. So my dive file is closed for today.

The following day we head for Magnetic Island and the pool for the practical exercises. First we learn the items of our equipment and how to use and arrange them. Just afterwards we jump in the pool for our swimming test: 200m free stile and 10 mins water treading which is not overly difficult. Lunch is rather lousy so nobody complains when we continue with the more interesting part: Lying on the bottom of the pool we learn how to breathe through the regulator with a complete equipment, learn how to remove and recollect our diving belt while under water or swimming at the surface, losing and recollecting mask and regulator. The meaning of the different hand signs is also pretty important as this is the only communication possible while diving. After three hours in the pool, the air in the tanks is getting low and we collect new bottles for our first practical dive in the sea. It was planned to go to a distant beach at the end of Maggie Island but because of a car failure we take the ferry harbour. We enter the water just next to the pier of Picnic Bay and inflate the jacket. Although there is not much to see around here, the first dive is sensational, a new feeling spreading out in your body while diving in an average depth of three meters. Diving on the Great Barrier Reef, Townsville

The three day / three night dive package starts Tuesday Night. We load the Coral Adventure at the Marina Yacht Harbour. I expected the boat to be a little bit bigger and better equipped as Blue Adrenalin advertised with "luxurious cabins" and so on. The boat, approximately 12m long and 3m wide, is stuffed with all the equipment and food we need for three days out on the reef. Nick Jester has brought his 90 CDs so at least there's a lot of music and entertainment aboard. Matt is our instructor, his girlfriend Sam the cook, Chris is an elderly, experienced skipper and Mike the videographer who is going to shoot a lot of footage while the group is diving. The luxurious cabins are indeed very narrow and small and the promise, that my luggage with the photo equipment won't be a problem, is not kept. That's why I'm going to sleep on my camera bag for three nights. We get up early the next morning, just before sunrise, to do a few routine exercises. There's not much time to explore the reef life, but I have no problems with the increasing depth of up to ten meters. After breakfast the ritual with the wetsuits and the equipment is repeated. After our duties like recollecting and cleaning the mask etc. we get more and more time to explore the fish life around the reef. But there's not much time aboard as we need plenty of time for taking our gear off and putting it on again. After lunch we complete our third dive which is our permit for the basic PADI open water certificate.

We start the advanced part the next day in rough water, the navigational dive is a problem as high tide is moving out, creating strong currents which makes it almost impossible to move under water. My air reserve is getting low as quickly as I've never seen before and the square of 30 meters we should navigate through is squeezed to a mere rectangle. At least we reach our buoy and wait for skipper Chris to be collected. A few hours later, during low tide, all the problems with currents are gone and the exploring dive of the reef ecology is very entertaining and pleasant. The night dive at the end of the day is not very special but leaves an eerie feeling, especially after we have seen a few reef sharks. The colours and the beauty of the reef are gone with the sunlight and the night dive is not that interesting, unlike the Yongala Shipwreck in the open sea which we explore the last day.

Reef Ecology

To conserve the reef region even during the increasing number of tourists and the intensive use of the Reef as a recreational area, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was established in 1994, protecting 348'700 sqkm. There are three main goals for the authorities:

- the regulation of the reef activities like tourism, sports and the industrial use. Only the tourism on the reef is worth AU$ 1.8 billion (1997), the fishing industry 0.5 billion.

- preservation of ressources

- future plans in politics and economics. Climate Data and Prognosis is extremely important, just like the control of the agriculture as the fertilizer can bleach the sea in the reef region.

Have a look at the Management of the Great Barrier Reef.

Links to the Great Barrier Reef

The January Issue of the National Geographic Magazine:

"Great Barrier Reef" article NG 01 / 01

"On Assignment " Royal National Geographic Society author Douglas H Chadwick writes about his experiences out there on the reef

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