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Welcome to my GBR photo page!
I worked as a scuba diving instructor on the Great Barrier Reef from March till December 2005. I worked on a few boats, but spent most of my time on Reef Encounter, a 35m catamaran with helicopter landing pad up top. Work started between 5:50 and 6am, getting ready for the first dive of the day - the advantage was that I saw the sun come up pretty much every morning. We ran 6 dives a day at three sites, and work was finished after the night dive each evening, around 8:30pm. I spent 5 days at sea with my own cabin, then returned to land for a three day "weekend" before starting over again.
Working 14 hours a day is not for everyone, but when your office is the Great Barrier Reef, things tend to stay uncomplicated. I regularly dived with sea turtles and sharks, taught a few scuba courses and got to show divers some of my favourite swim-throughs and caves. Working a dive boat has its own stresses (keep away from boat politics!!), but the time flies by and you soon forget whats happenning in the real world. Coming back to land was sometimes a shock, especially after a longer stay of 8 days or so at sea. Having to deal with everyday things like traffic, pedestrian crossings, supermarkets, etc just seems foreign and theres something definitely cool about that.
Anyway, here are some photos from these times....
Last update: December 3, 2008
