A dive boat is pretty much in constant motion and activity level most of the daylight hours (and sometimes during the nighttime hours). We were not quite prepared for all this but gradually got into the schedule and flow of pre-dive briefings, meals, diving and some chill time (brief) on the sun deck. Our second day on board was the marathon day, with two morning dives, two afternoon dives and a night dive (our first!). Kicking off with first breakfast at 6:30 AM until back on the boat at 8:00 PM after the night dive.

Not sure what Google has to do with the Google Gardens dive – we did not ask.

The Monolith is apparently the largest single species outcropping of coral on the reef, beginning with one single coral organism about 2,500 years ago. It is truly immense and hard to adequately capture in a photo or video.

Night dive. So this dive we are a bit apprehensive about… diving in the dark (with a flashlight) with sharks and all those other predators that come out to the reef after the sun sets. We are the only two divers on the boat that do not have a night dive in their log – true newbies are we! Fortunately a couple of the more experienced divers assure us that the initial terror is replaced by awe – we’ll see about that…

Flashlights (dive lights) in hand and glow sticks tied to our rig we enter the dark water off the dive platform. It helps that the boat also has two bright floods washing the deck and surrounding water with light.

We were advised during the briefing that the divers are actually helping out the night predators like the travelly and white tip reef sharks. They like divers and swim along with us as our dive lights point out the smaller reef fish who are no longer protected by the blanket of darkness. We do our best to keep the beams sweeping back and forth, but unfortunately our predator companions are very quick and the circle of life closes for a few.

And more predators…