The shark circled us slowly.  The dark water of the night dive made the detail of the beast hard to see but there was no doubt of its size.  It was a gray reef shark all right, a big one.  I reached up for the 5 meter bar float­ing above me and looked down to Cesca.  She had not yet seen the shark. I turned my torch on and its beam high­lighted the gloom as well as the mil­lions of float­ing particles all around us.  It was like see­ing through a snow storm.  I swung it towards the sharks shape.

I wanted to know what it was think­ing, I knew that it could sense the energy flood­ing through our bod­ies and smell the blood in our veins but did won­der about the strange ves­sel above our heads.  It must have seen those before and they always brought food, in fact I myself had seen the crew chump­ing fish into the water to attract these sea hunters.  They are one of the main tour­ist attrac­tions of diving the reef.  An easy fact until one is actu­ally under­wa­ter with one.  The light was reflect­ing back towards me from the sharks eye.  It was there­fore look­ing dir­ectly at the torch.  I pulled the torch away and onto my con­sole float­ing by my left arm.  Cesca joined me at the bar and she checked her con­sole as well.  My dive com­puter was clear, I had to do a 3 minute stop here, 5 meters bel­low the boat, before ascend­ing.  Cesca held up 3 fin­gers.  She had the same read­ings on her com­puter.  That’s 3 minutes with this shark swim­ming around us.  Its not that Grey sharks as espe­cially dan­ger­ous to divers, but they have been known to take a bite out of a limbs wav­ing around.  I couldn’t wait any longer I wanted to get a good look at him.  I panned the torch around until his eyes reflec­ted the light again.  Cesca watched and then looked at me.  I put my right hand against my head like a fin.  The sign for shark.  She looked quickly at he beast and then gabbed my arm and pulled her­self pro­tect­ively closer.

Cesca like myself is new to shar­ing the water with some­thing that could eas­ily eat us.  We watched it circle and then sud­denly with a flick of its tail it changed course.  It was now com­ing dir­ectly towards us, its decision made; that light was worth invest­ig­at­ing, there may be food there.  I watched its speed and then turned off the light.  If it was com­ing for us it would be on top of us in 5 seconds.

1…

2…

3…

4…

Cesca gripped my arm as I waited till that last moment to turn the torch back on…

I had not been big on the idea of night diving.  The pre­vi­ous night we had per­formed a guided night dive on the reef as part of our Advanced PADI course and that had been fine as all we had to do was fol­low our guide.  How­ever, when on our own, well I knew how bad Cesca and I were at under­wa­ter nav­ig­a­tion.  If we could get lost in the day, then a night excur­sion to 14 meters, too deep to sur­face to see where the boat was without a stop, could get us into real trouble.  Again, it is all about exper­i­ence.  In fact that is the way the Advanced PADI course is designed; to give you that exper­i­ence and enable you to become com­fort­able with dif­fer­ent types of diving.

The course run by Cairns Pro-Dive is one of the most respec­ted on the reef.  11 dives over 3 nights at sea in the spe­cially built SCUBAPRO ves­sel.  A private birth, all food included and a top instructor.  It soun­ded too good to be true but the detail was in the price tag, which was high.  There are tons of oper­at­ors on the reef, but after a couple were left behind by one boat I knew that I wanted one of the best.  I scrounged around the net and found a late book­ing deal through an agent.  The Pro-Dive team have the quiet relaxed and slightly bored look of men who do this trip with a new group every single week but had bags of pro­fes­sion­al­ism.  They all spor­ted good tans, easy smiles and branded shirts.

The ride out of Cairns had been very rough and had taken few pris­on­ers.  Francesca and I had stocked up on sea sick­ness pills along with cof­fee in the morn­ing so while we cer­tainly didn’t enjoy the rough­ness of the sea, we didn’t feel the need to share our break­fast with it.  Once anchored on the reef the dives star­ted straight away.  Firstly the dive mas­ter gave a brief­ing on the top deck that was designed to ori­ent­ate us with the reef’s fea­tures and point out some things not to miss.  He sug­ges­ted an easy course around the site that would start at 10 meters and slowly rise, remov­ing the need for a safety stop all together.  He assured us that no one would get lost.

This became a run­ning joke over the next few days.

Excited to be back in the water, Cesca and I made our way back down to the lower deck, the dive deck, to kit up.  Eager and smil­ing we checked each oth­ers dive equip­ment as bud­dies are trained to do.

Firstly we check the reg­u­lator is work­ing and oxy­gen is flow­ing when breath­ing.  you do this while watch­ing the air gauge on the con­sole as a tank that is not turned can have a few breaths sat in the pipe.  If the O2 needle doesn’t drop as you breath the tank is fine.  We then check the second backup reg­u­lator the same way.  This is fol­lowed by check­ing the weight belt, mask and flip­pers are on and that the BCD inflates and deflates.  Again the BCD is vital to safety and is how you stay afloat.  A broken one will make you sink like a stone until you get your belt off.  Finally we check that the tank is cor­rectly attached and the air is all the way on minus a half a turn.  Only then can one actu­ally get in the water.

If this sounds like hard work, then wel­come to diving.  Diving can be one of the most relax­ing exper­i­ences of your life.  Can be.  For the begin­ner or occa­sional diver it can be a adren­alin fuelled, heart pound­ing, thrill ride that is over far to quickly.  The more exper­i­enced you are the more you can relax and there­fore the slower you breath.  Slow breath­ing is calm­ing and relax­ing and you go through your O2 much slower.  You will also make less mis­takes.  Diving can be a harsh les­son in not screw­ing up and pay­ing atten­tion.  Any sport where you need to pair up has dangers.

Suf­fice to say a lot of people got lost on the first dive.

The next dive was the start of the Advanced les­sons.  All those on our course sat around the same table and we all star­ted to get to know each other.  With the many nights at the hostel food courts, Cesca and I soon broke the ice and star­ted chat­ting with the other stu­dents.  The Advanced stu­dents looked a lot calmer than the table next to us full of first timers, fresh from the swim­ming pool les­sons.  Advanced PADI involves a num­ber of taster dives in vari­ous spe­cial­isa­tions.  There are 3 core dives of deep dive, night dive and nav­ig­a­tion.  Then there are the 2 elect­ives.  They are many elect­ives to choose from but almost every­one picks pho­to­graphy and nat­ur­al­ist.  These two are the easi­est and most fun.  No one went for the search and res­cue dive as this involved the instructor throw­ing a spoon off the boat and mak­ing you go and find it!

The les­sons went quickly and the dives soon star­ted rack­ing up.  The nav­ig­a­tion dive was excel­lent train­ing and taught us how to count our kicks to estim­ate dis­tance, how to use the com­pass to ensure dir­ec­tion an bar­ing and how to find our way back using the reefs land­marks as a guide.  The deep dive, down to 25 meters, was very spooky and slightly scary in its depth.  Whilst down there the instructor asked us to count to 20 to demon­strate how nitro­gen nar­cosis takes effect at that depth and it becomes hard to focus the mind.  I coun­ted as care­fully as I could and then held up my hand.  Once back on the boat we coun­ted again and com­pared the time dif­fer­ences.  Cesca’s was 32 under­wa­ter and 22 on the boat.  Strangely mine was 24 and 24, which goes to show that I can’t count at any depth!

Plant and animal life on the Milne, Petaj and Flyne reef’s is amaz­ing.  We saw some of the worlds most amaz­ing coral gar­dens resplen­dent with all sorts of cor­als and liv­ing organisms.

Cesca was very fond of the Christ­mas Tree worms that sprout from rocks and cor­als.  Animal life was sim­il­arly amaz­ing.  We swam inches from turtles, around end­less mul­ti­tudes of fish of all types and col­ours and past many fast mov­ing Barracuda’s.

Not to men­tion sharks…

5… I turned the torch back on.

The large Gray shark had resumed his orbit back out at 20 meters.  We both breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I glanced at my com­puter and saw that our 3 minutes was up and we gladly ascen­ded out of the dark­ness and gloom to the boat.  This night diving wasn’t so hard after all and as for sharks, well leave them alone and they will leave you it seems.  The Advanced PADI Course had suc­ceeded to make us more confident.

How­ever, the most impress­ive thing I saw dur­ing the trip actu­ally was seen out­side the water.  While head­ing to our birth on the top deck of the boat I came across another diver star­ing out into dark night.  I wondered if he was feel­ing ok when he turned to me and said, “can you see that rain­bow over there?”  I looked in puz­zle­ment and sure enough about a mile off the from the boat sat a rain­bow.  At night.  It was very clear and we could make out all the col­ours even though they were darker than nor­mal.  I stood in won­der for 5 seconds not say­ing any­thing.  But what caused it?  I looked behind us and the moon was very bright and full and being winter very low to the hori­zon.  It was just enough light to cast the rain­bow against a light shower.  I must tell Cesca I thought and went to find her.  I told every­one I passed about the moon­bow, but most didn’t believe me.  I couldn’t find Cesca any­where and when she finally emerged we ran back up to the top deck to find it was gone in cloud.

30 years I have inhab­ited this planet and I have never seen one of those before.  I cant help but won­der if I will ever see one again.

The next day the boat headed back into town and we star­ted the drink­ing with the friends we had made on the course.  On the way we passed a mother Whale play­ing with her child and every­one crammed onto the top deck to take photos.

Once back on dry land we vis­ited the Pro-Dive shop and paid the bill (OMG!) and then to our hostel.  After put­ting the flames out on my wal­let we showered and changed.  After all the live-aboard courses there is the oblig­at­ory night on the town with the crew and other divers so we headed back out and had a piss up to remember.

Regards,

Basho

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