Best Company to Use for Scuba Diving Great Barrier Reef

[nelsonj8]

Hello everyone,

My girlfriend and I have booked a cruise out of Sydney departing Dec 14, 2012. Before it takes off my girlfriend and I wanted to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). We are wanting to spend two days in Cairns or Port Douglas to dive. We are both advanced scuba divers and want the best company that wouldn't stick us baby sitting newbies. I don't really care where we stay (Cairns vs. Port Douglas), but would like to have an excellent diving experience.

Are there any hotel/dive packages i could look into? Any companies that come highly recommended?

We only have Dec 10th and 11th to dive. We were thinking about doing a day trip dive one day and then the Kuranda Rain Forest Tram ride the next. Is Kuranda worth doing or should we spend both days diving?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!!!

 

[Peter69_56]

If you have dived overseas at places like Sipidan or PNG, Vanuatu you might be dissapointed with GBR. We went there after PNG and found that while the dive company was organised and well run with good meals on the liveaboard, the reef has suffered continual use and is in (in our opinion) poor shape. Unless you spend significant money and go to places like Cod hole north of Port Douglas (which is an expensive trip $2100 for 4 days), the "normal" trips out of Cairns were of dissapointment to us. If you havent done a lot of diving you might find it ok. We were told the Divers Den trip is better than some of the others which are more designed for newbies, but overall we wernt impressed.

Our other issue was that although it was a liveaboard, they come back to the same patch of reef daily to do diver changeovers. This means you dive the same patch daily usually twice thus 4 days means 8 dives in the same area. We were not impressed and wouldnt dive there again or recommend to anyone. Given the cost, for us it was fairly expensive ordinary diving for us. We have found you get (in general) better diving experiences and cheaper overseas for less money than in Australia. An example is we spent 17 days in Bali with accomodation all meals (except tea), 2 dives a day (mix of boat and shore), transfers all for $1350 and see shipwrecks, mola mola, mantas, good reef. By comparison we had 4 days on GBR with Divers Den $750, average diving, one shark, average reef. To us it seems the package diving in Cairns is (in our opinion) like herding cattle, all a process and they try and get as many people on each day as possible, we didnt find it a pleasant experience being packed on with many inexperienced divers, snorklers etc all falling over each other, all assumed as newbies, 'don't do this, don't do that etc etc. Maybe we have been spoiled, but we wouldnt go back again. Must admit though, they are well organised, its a well oiled machine with processing everyone and air fills etc. Our preference is for smaller numbers on a boat.

We stayed south of cairns at New Chalon, its not the flashest but has a pool and is clean and very cheap and the staff were very very nice. It is a distance from Cairns central but we had a car so no issues for us. Was about $50/night and is about 10 min out of town. has a small shopping complex within walking distance.

We have experienced Fiji outer islands, Vanuatu, PNG, Sipidan, Truk and our opinion is that they offer much better value for money.

We drove the Rain Forest area as we thought it too expensive to take the trips (and once again herded about like cattle), not our thing. We also hated the fact that the beaches in cairns suck, just mud flats covered in sand. We are spoiled in Victoria with beautiful sand beaches and rolling surf.

We use Trip Advisor to book all our accomodation and found its usually pretty good indicator. If you have say 5-15% bad reports its probably ok as you will always find people who complain about the most minor things. If its say 30-40% bad we dont book them.

Whats your diving experiences to date? If you have only dived locally cold water or quarries then GBR will probably be fine for you and in particular if you havent done much coral reef diving. Pity you cant dive the Yongala, although a cyclone has damaged the coral to some degree, its still a great dive and you can see whales there as well. We had whales go over us as we dived.

 

[nelsonj8]

Thanks for the reply. I had almost given up on this thread. I really appreciate all the information.

I think I have everything figured out. I decided to change my flight and spend more time in Cairns. So my itinerary looks like the following now:

1st Full Day: Kuranda Rain Forrest Tram/Sky train.
-My girlfriend wants to hold a Kuala Bear and I want to see Venom museum in Kuranda.
2nd day: Deep Sea Divers Den Day Trip Dive
-Figure that will familiarize ourselves with GBR and get a feel for how the operators are.
3rd Day: Board Spirit of Freedom for a 4-day Liveaboard to Cod Hole and Ribbon Reefs
-I decided to spend the extra money and do a 4 day live-aboard on Spirit of Freedom out to COD hole and Ribbon Reefs. I wanted to do liveaboard out to Osprey Reef and see the shark feeding. However, my schedule wouldn't permit that. But that is definitely on my list of things to do next time I'm out that way.

Also, we are staying in the Cairns Queen Court hotel. It doesn't look too bad from the pictures I've seen and seems to be a good value....fingers crossed...lol

Based on all the reviews I have seen, I definitely didn't want to limit myself to just the day trip dives. For the money I've dropped, I'm really hoping my dive plans work out to be a memorable trip. We have our Sea Life and Go Pro ready!

As far as dive experience, this will be our first tropical ocean diving. I know i will probably be impressed with anything i see, but we will have come a long way. I want it to be well worth our while.

Thanks again for all the info and I'll post a trip report when i get back.

 

[akimika]

Enjoy your trip! I did Osprey Reef with Spirit of Freedom January 2012. It was an amazing adventure and the dives were great. We did not see any other boats or any other divers besides the other guests on the boat. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Have fun!

 

[Freddy Smith]

Divers Den is definately one of the "cheap and nasty" backpacker day trips. If you want quality go with Tusa, Silverswift or Silversonic