Cairns, Australia: Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef

Cairns is tropical. In other words, Cairns is north of the Tropic of Capricorn, which at 23° 26′ 16″ south of the Equator, marks the southern limit of the tropics. All this means is that, at least once each year, the sun in Cairns is directly overhead.

It does not mean Cairns stays warm through the winter.

Don't let it fool you!

We found this out the hard way in a quest to fulfill another of our lifelong dreams. As I may have mentioned before, Nana and I like swimming and love aquariums. This has translated into a growing fondness for snorkeling, which is basically like swimming in an aquarium. And what better place to snorkel than the granddaddy of them all, the Great Barrier Reef? Yeah, the only time we had to head Down Under was in the middle of the Aussie winter, but Cairns is tropical, right? Surely it can't be that cold if they have all that coral?

The thing is, Cairns usually isn't - the average high in June is about 79 F (26 C). But on June 19, our day on the reef, the high temperature barely kissed 77 F, spending most of the day around 68 F. Throw in some very blustery wind, and you have a pretty cold day for a swim!

Wetsuits - not as warm as they look. And they don't look particularly warm .

Nevertheless, we still had a great day out on the reef. The good fortune started even before we boarded the boat, when we decided to rent an underwater camera for the day. We'd packed super light, so we had nothing to offer for collateral - no ID, no credit card, not even much cash. But apparently we looked trustworthy enough to forgo the regular protocol.


Now, the Great Barrier Reef isn't one reef: it's actually a huge system of thousands of smaller reefs, of which our snorkeling site was just one. Most of these reefs, ours included, consist of a coral wall facing the open water, defined on each side by a channel of deeper water, with a shallow lagoon directly behind the coral wall. 


At each of the major reef sites, the operating tour company builds a platform anchored to one of the channels at the edge of the lagoon. This serves as the base of operations for a variety of activities: snorkeling, diving, semi-submersibles and glass-bottomed boats, and such.

Entering the lagoon.

Looking back at the platform from the middle of the lagoon.

We spent most of the morning in the lagoon itself, swimming around and playing with the underwater camera. 

You'll notice that sometimes the composition is a bit . . . off. That's because the surf was pretty heavy for our day at the reef: even though we were well behind the breakers in the shelter of the lagoon, the seas were still rising and falling about a foot every few seconds, making it really tough to steady your shot.

Instagramm'd!

This is immediately before Nana rammed face-first into the camera.

On the whole, the lagoon itself was somewhat less impressive than the snorkeling we'd done in the Philippines and in Okinawa. The water was rougher and a bit cloudier, and the coral was still showing some signs of damage from a relatively recent tropical storm.


But the fish and other animals were something else entirely. Simply put, there were tons of fish, many of which were much larger than anything we'd gone swimming with before.

For example: Nana caught a brief glimpse of a white-tip reef shark at the edge of the lagoon. (Alas, no photo to confirm.) We also spotted some huge sea turtles on our semi-submersible ride through the channel.

Not a photo-friendly ride, unfortunately.

We also both got to pet Wally, a friendly and fearless humphead wrasse.

This shot is from the tour company's official 

At one point, I found myself in the middle of a daily feeding - hundreds of big predatory fish swooping in and out of the water. Nana was able to film it from above. (Warning: the first clip begins with a long shot of me looking very stupid trying to float in place.)

But the real adventure began after lunch, when we took a little launch boat out to the face of the reef for a guided "snorkeling safari" along the outer reef wall.


This was just incredibly cool. The swimming was sweet - bobbing up and down in the rollers on the edge of the open sea. The reef wall just seemed to plunge down forever into the darkness. It felt like hovering or flying (though I think the vertigo got to Nana a bit).

Joy!

Sup.

These divers passed by directly below us.

BUBBLES!

BUBBLES!

And the fish were awesome. Huge schools of larger pelagic fish, too many to name, including a couple big rock cods stalking their prey. Flashes of red and gold and gray and white rippling in the surge. Nana had the camera and snapped a few great shots of the fish.

Not pictured: our valiant camerawoman getting motion sick and hypothermic in the chilly surf.

Also not pictured: me turning around every ten seconds to make sure Nana wasn't drifting out to sea.

It's a bit blurry, but that's a huge rock cod a long way down through the water.
(In the US, we call similar fishes "groupers.")

As a bonus, we were swimming with a real live marine biologist, who was able to answer our shouted questions over the waves. For instance, here's a kind of brain coral gradually being colonized and taken over by a different species.

 And the bright orange dot in this photo is apparently a very rare and special type of coral, whose name I've completely forgotten.

Swimming and marine life and scientists and more swimming and the freaking ocean? I was pretty much in heaven. Well worth the price of shivering violently the whole way back to the platform. I don't carry quite as much insulation as I used to.

Plus, we got to cap the day of with . . . another boat ride!

We were nowhere near toasty warm in that garb.

Here we are, returning the camera safe and sound.