Diving the GBR

SkiFletch

New member
Hey guys, some of you may remember my wonderful run-in with cancer that I chronicled here last year. Well I'm still doing great and the experience pushed my wife and I to do #1 on the bucket list just in case :). So we got on a plane and flew halfway around the world to Australia with the main purpose of diving the Great Barrier Reef. I figured, how often do you get to do this, so I bought a GoPro HD Hero2 to record it all :).

We did 6 dives out of Cairns and had a BLAST doing it. The sheer size of the rocks and coral out there is mind-blowing. Fields of acros, porites the size of a car, and maxima clams as big as me :eek: were just some of the great stuff we saw. I've been busy decoding/encoding/compressing the 4+ hours of HD video and making my CPU cry in submission, the poor thing... Ultimately I want to make one big video with it all, but in the meantime here's the first select sections of it.

This dive was at Thetford Reef at a mooring site called "Tennis Courts." Our dive guide found a sea turtle that was looking for some algae to eat. Afterwards she explained to us that a cyclone had gone by a week or so before our dives and turned over all the rubble that the algae lived on and the turtles were having difficulty finding food. So she was overturning and righting the rubble to find the algae and feed it to the turtle. The sand and rubble bottom was about 60' of depth where we are. As you can see, the turtle was totally chill. The video was uploaded in HD if you want (obviously will take a while to load) though the default is lower. At the end is my wife Kelly trying to feed the turtle and freaking out when it's beak gets close :) Enjoy and fear not, there will be more

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ngpCNYq6nk&context=C4d44da3ADvjVQa1PpcFO5ES8U6N5TjQAEp8h29Gdnrz5zhVMbPh4=
 
That's great. I am very happy for you. Glad you are doing and feeling well. The is great, not my personal #1 (top 3 though) but someday I will go there. And no one needs to get cancer to see the world. Just pack a bag and go.
 
This is awesome!!! The clarity and quality of the video is great!! Can't wait to see the rest. Also glad to hear your doing well!!
 
Very cool, finally able to see it on a desktop! Was that a loggerhead? Very pretty turtle.

Fire up the footage on the acros mang!
 
Nice work Mike. My wife just go through breast cancer and it's amazing how you change your perspective on things like this. Glad you went and are sharing with us. Been working with a GoPro in my tank for a few months now, we'll have to share notes. Peace.
 
Nice work Mike. My wife just go through breast cancer and it's amazing how you change your perspective on things like this. Glad you went and are sharing with us. Been working with a GoPro in my tank for a few months now, we'll have to share notes. Peace.
 
I snorkeled (I wish I could go diving, but I donโ€™t have the certificate) a half a dozen times myself in several areas of the world hoping to see a turtle, but have not encountered it yet... still waiting for the day! Hopefully this summer though :)
 

Similar threads

Back
Top