Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, Australia
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system and can be amazing to dive; turtles, rainbow-colored fish, hundreds of different kinds of invertebrates from lobsters to nudibranchs, and the wonderful corals themselves: the large staghorn corals forming incredible structures to dive around. Numerous operators out of Cairns have day-trips down to a science and 3 dives can easily be done in a day, and have you back to Cairns just in time for happy hour. Unfortunately, if you have been diving for a long time and in lots of various destinations, these day trips sour your impressions of the reef; heaps of unskilled divers kicking lots of coral and grabbing onto it whilst the divemaster circles them around the boat as 1 by 1 they run out of air and go up to the surface. For skilled divers, a better overall value would be a liveaboard trip to the more northern pristine reef.
