It's raining... sharks!

Well, it's finally happened... the wet season that everyone ranted and raved about is here. It's been raining for days in Cairns... good news is that I don't work in Cairns! Not really, anyway! I work about 40km away on this lovely large reef...

Despite days of rain lately, the reef has been beautiful the last two days. Yesterday it was forecast to be blowing 25 knots (which is rather windy...) and it was supposed to be raining on the reef all day. The morning was a little overcast, with a bit of a drizzle on the trip out, but by mid-day it was AMAZING. It was probably one of the more beautiful days we've had since I've been out there. Really clear visibility, flat glass calm water and no wind to be had. We even changed up the days itinerary in honor of the beautiful day! 

Pretty much every day we go to Hastings reef in the morning and a site called Breaking Patches in the afternoon... yesterday we went to reef call Saxon reef which was just absolutely gorgeous. I managed to go on a dive there as well, helping out one of our instructors with a group of introductory scuba divers. These are people that mostly have never dove before, and we take them out for an easy training dive to give them a taste for being underwater. Some people take to it really well, some people never leave the boat. But I got to tag along and help herd the intro divers on this amazing site. We had three white-tip reef sharks wandering around almost as soon as we jumped in the water. The fish life was excellent! Huge schools of red bass (snappers) and sweetlips... loads of damselfish, coral trout (groupers) and clownfish. The coral was excellent and it was a new, different site for most of the crew, so we were all stoked. Just about all the crew got to jump in for a dive, which is rather uncommon, but we only had 43 passengers on the boat, so it was a really cruisey day!  

Best of all, at this site I saw my first cuttlefish! Cuttlefish are related to squid and octopus. They're incredibly smart and charismatic animals and interacting with one, even this little shy one that we found, was amazing and a serious dream come true. My marine biology nerd sensors were off the chart! They're SUCH COOL CREATURES. 

Today was equally beautiful, weather-wise. It was a bit more stressful.. we had more people on the boat and loads of them couldn't swim. Normally we take non-swimmers out in groups of 4 or less. I took 4 out to start and somehow ended up back at the boat with about 7 people grabbing on to my life ring, one of them near panicked and none of them were very good English speakers. Despite that, it was still a really lovely day. Calm, sunny, almost no wind... really can't complain! 

Now... hopefully the weather continues in our favor. Apparently there may or may not be a cyclone heading our way. A cyclone, by the way, is just a backwards hurricane. But Wednesday is forecast to be about 35 knots which is CRAZY windy weather for boating. I'm hoping that Wednesday will be a day off, but I won't know that until tomorrow! 

Stay tuned for the possible thrilling comparison of South Florida hurricane parties to Cairns cyclone parties! 

Love and fishes! 

Working hard!

Hello friends and family and blog readers everywhere!

Life in Australia is amazing. I've been working my tail off... today was day 10 straight and I know I'm working again tomorrow, but it's all good. I like my job a lot, the people I work with are pretty awesome and even when we have a rough day from time to time, they make it entertaining at least. But really, even the rough days aren't so bad... when it comes down to it, I'm still working on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef. It's a rare day when I don't get in the water for a longish snorkel. We've had beautiful weather lately too, which makes our lives on the boat so much easier... calm weather means less seasick passengers.

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is helping people overcome their fears of water or snorkeling. It's really satisfying to talk someone into the water, lead them around on a life ring for a little while while they freak out about water getting in their snorkels and having mild panic attacks and then work with them and come back later in the afternoon and find them out in the water, swimming around with a noodle, raving about how amazing their day was.

The least rewarding part? Definitely dealing with the seasick ones.

Here's a couple of pictures, thanks to my lovely mother, who played paparazzi while she was on the boat over the holidays... so you all can see my ridiculously wonderful job.

This is what my mornings look like... cooking bacon and eggs for somewhere between 60 and 100 people

Yayyyy snorkel tourssssssss

Tough day at the office... on lookout making sure everyone's safe and happy. 

Some of our awesome crew! 

Life is good down under. Sending lots of love back home! Hope you're not freezing too much! It's sunny and warm and beautiful down here! 

Love and fishes!! 

Happy 2013!

Happy New Year all!

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and New Years back home in the states! It was pretty awesome around here, although a little more unusual than years past.

I worked on Christmas day, which wasn't so bad... it was a little hectic, we had 110 guests on the boat when we normally top it off around 95. Most of the people on the boat couldn't swim, which always makes life a little challenging. But everyone was festive and in a good mood. All the crew had on the most ridiculous Christmas hats ever. No one can be sad when you have a foot tall Christmas tree hat on your head. When we got back into the dock at the end of the day and got the boat all cleaned up, I  found these two lost-looking Americans waiting at the dock for me! My parents had arrived!

Had a great time with them... had calamari for Christmas dinner at a cafe on the Esplanade, had a couple of glasses of wine and they passed out. 30 hours of traveling will wear you out! I met up with the "Orphan Christmas Party"... the party the boat crew had for everyone that didn't have family around. I had family around... they just went to bed at 8 o'clock... haha. It was actually an awesome party... complete with fake snow, water guns and Nerf guns.

They spent the week playing tourist in Cairns and the surrounding areas. I had a couple of days off work, so we spent one day in Kuranda in the rainforest, a day at the beach in Port Douglas and a day whitewater rafting in Tully! It was all a lot of fun and great time to spend with Mom and Dad again. It was fun to play tourist a little bit! When I was back at work, they came out on the boat with us a couple of times and met all the ridiculous crew and spent some good quality time at the Pier Bar, our daily afternoon stop after work.

Had a great New Years with my parents and with some of my friends from the boat... watched the fireworks over the water at the lagoon on midnight and wandered around town a bit... work at 645 New Years Day? Not so much fun. A bit of a hangover cruise for all parties, but we did alright!

Mom and Dad left on the 2nd :( It was great to have them in town for a while and I think they really enjoyed Australia. I wouldn't be surprised to see them here again before my year out here is up!

Hope everyone had a great New Years. Here's to a great 2013!

Love and fishes!