We woke up early and rushed out the door. We walked down along the boardwalk to the harbour and soon we were at the docks where we boarded a gigantic boat and started our way to the reef. Originally we had booked a different trip but it had been too hot where we were going to be snorkelling so we got tickets for this one instead. After two hours we got to the reef and stopped in front of a boat platform. We rented an underwater camera and put on our wetsuits and masks before jumping into the water. Right off the platform there was giant fish and he wasn't scared of us at all. It was a giant grouper.
We continued on to explore more of the reef. We all headed different ways to see all the beautiful corals and fish below. After a few minutes we saw a green sea turtle swimming past us.
We followed him with the camera but he swam a lot faster than us and soon he was out of sight. We split up again and swam around through the ravines checking out the millions of fish.
There were a bunch of parrotfish of all shapes, colours and sizes feeding from the corals and clownfish hiding down in the Anemone.
There were a few starfish and Zaddek even saw a cuddle fish.
Kaden and I were exploring the edge of the reef when we saw sea turtles swimming deep below. Kaden swam to get Mom, Dad and Sage who hadn't seen the first sea turtle while I stayed and watched to see if they swam away.
One of them did but the other one laid down on the ocean floor. As I waited I dove down to get a closer look at her. The first few times I made sure to stay a good ten feet away to not scare her. I dove down a few more times and soon she seemed to know I wasn't a threat and I was able to dive right down until I was three feet away from her beautiful shell. Kaden, Mom, Dad, and Sage got back in time to dive down and see her.
Mom, Dad, and Sage went further into the reef but Kaden and I swam the edge when we spotted a snorkel way down at the bottom, farther down than the sea turtle was. Kaden dove way down to get it and came up gasping for air. While he was catching his breath I was looking around the edge when I saw the fin of a black tipped reef shark. Its tail flicked as it disappeared into the depths. Kaden put his mask back on and we dove down but he was gone by the time we got there. We ventured the reef for another hour before we had some lunch. It was mostly seafood so I ate a bit of salad and mashed potatoes before heading back out to the water. After ten minutes Mom called everybody over to see a tiny green sea turtle lying under an overhang of coral. He wasn't scared of us either so we could swim up close enough to take photos.
After everybody had seen him we let him rest and continued to explore the amazing reef. After a few hours we got back on the boat tired from swimming all day and headed back to our seats for the ride back. We looked over some of the photos we took and removed the SD card of the photos when we returned the camera. Once we got back to Cairns we walked back to our hotel room getting rest for our flight to Sydney the next day.
Total boats: 1 huge one
Total miles walked: 3 miles
Total miles swam: a ton
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