General Information
The Great Barrier Reef is in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia. It's the largest coral reef in the world and is a world heritage site and is listed as one of the seven wonders of the world. It's so big that it can be seen from space! The Great Barrier Reef is composed of more than 2,800 individual reefs, stretches 1,600 miles, and covers about 133,000 square miles.
Deciding where to scuba dive in this vast area can be one of the first challenges you face if you decide to go diving there. There are just so many good destinations with beautiful reefs and abundant marine life that it can be hard to choose. There are over 400 species of coral, 4,000 species of mollusks, and over 1,400 species of fish. It's so big that scientists discover new species on a regular basis.
Dive Destinations
Cairns and Port Douglas - This is the part of the reef that is closest to the coast and therefore the reefs here are extremely popular as one-day dive destinations. The trip to the reef takes a couple of hours depending of course on which part of the reef you're heading for. There's a variety of trips to choose from ranging from snorkeling to diving to taking a charter live-aboard boat for a 1 to 4 day trip. The reefs are home to beautiful reef fish and while you're snorkeling or diving you're liable to see all kinds of life from whales to turtles to dolphins.
Northern Ribbon Reefs - As the name suggests this is a chain of long narrow reefs that lie 40 to 60 miles north of the Cairns and Port Douglas reefs. Because of their distance from the mainland these reefs are more isolated from the effects of mainland development and agriculture and thus offer some extraordinary diving with much better visibility than you'll find at Cairns and Port Douglas. Also because of the distance, trips to the Ribbon Reefs are in the 2 to 5 day range. The best known destination here is Cod Hole, which is named for the Potato Cod which gets really big! I'm talking like 350 pounds big!
Coral Sea Reefs - If you want spectacular diving and are willing to go further out you can head for the Coral Sea. This area of reefs are 60 to 100 miles to the northeast of Cairns and because of their remoteness the visibility underwater is amazing. You're going to see gorgeous coral and lots of large sea creatures including reef sharks, silver tips, tuna, mackerel, and cod. If you're adventurous there are dive operators that have shark-feeding tours so you can see them close up.
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