Finding Nemo

Hey, we survived the deep sea dives and are now certified scuba divers! Yay! I don't know how often we can sample of this glorious hobby as it is so expensive, but for three days on the Great Barrier Reef we entered another world, one that humans are not meant to partake in....oh, the marvels of technology!
Turtles, jellyfish, giant sea slugs and clams, thousands of fish in colours so vibrant and shapes so ridiculous that it was hard to soak in all the new life around us on each salty half hour dream-like excursion below the surface. On our first independent dive, only the two of us to navigate our way through the deeps, Mike descended deeper than we were certified to go to tickle a thorny sea slug lazing about on the sandy sea bed, and was punished by witnessing our new underwater camera popping out of its "secure fastening" on his inflatable vest to rocket 19.4 meters to the surface above and shoot a meter above the surf! Climbing onto the boat lamenting our loss, we were thrilled to find the crew flashing self-portraits with a familiar-looking device which they had spotted and retrieved from the choppy waves. We have now spent 209 minutes below the surface, sometimes calm, occasionally a bit frightening...as Mike and I were exploring the coral reef on our last dive, the 40 knots wind and strong current above dragged the boat and its moorings out to the deeper ocean, so when all the divers surfaced, we could not swim against the current to reach it, nor the coast 50 kms away. Every person had to be rescued in an inflatable motorboat. A 1 meter wide jellyfish was floating along with the two of us waiting for the boat, we left him to his own fate.
The highlight was the guided dive at night, I was nervous enough already when during our pre-dive safety briefing, someone yelled out "Sharks!" and we peered over the rail to where we were about to leap into the water in our scuba gear...the boat's spotlight had attracted loads of little fish, which had in turn attracted 10 or more black-tipped reef sharks which were stirring up a froth of seafoam in their predatory circling. This was just the type of situation I imagine everyone's mother to warn them against participating, but our dive leader swore that they would not bother us as long as we did not hassle them. They were only 2.5 meters long after all. He said "If you shine your flashlight at the reefwall and see little red eyes glowing back at you, it is probably a lobster: catch it for our dinner. If you shine your light into the deep and see two green eyes, it is probably a shark. If those two eyes begin to diverge, it is coming at you: stop shining your light on it!" He didn't reveal how us being blind to our shark's progress in our direction would protect us 10 meters below the surface!
Now we have dried off and the land has ceased to undulate beneath our wobbly landlegs, back at the Cairns campground which is a definite step down from the private ensuite cabin and great meals on the boat. No one is beckoning us to join them on the five-a-day dives off the back of a boat to view a seascape too bizarre for us to have imagined, but Taiwan is now calling us so we will be leaving the southern hemishpere in a few short hours....