My partner went on a Taka liveaboard last year and generally had a good time. Though she did say there was a lot of pressure to dive, so she felt "uncomfortable" if she decided to sit out a particular dive. She also felt it was quite intense, i.e. "we're diving here, you've got 40 minutes, get in and get out so we can move on".
You've also gotta to ask questions about fish/shark feeding! Most of the boats out of Cairns feed either the potato cod or sharks. There is one boat that doesn't (can't remember the name, sorry!) and fair play to them - feeding fish and sharks is totally unethical and not a practice that I can encourage or support any way at all.
One of the spots I dive locally has been a marine reserve for about 30 years - for a lot of that time, because it's easily accessible for snorkellers and families, the fish were fed in one way or another. First it was "human food", but after realising that's not a good idea it moved on to breaking open kina (sea urchins) and feeding them to the fish. Now, fish feeding is banned, but there are some big snapper around that remember the feeding days and they pester and harrangue divers to get food.
Now, a 2ft snapper is only going to give you a nip on the fingers (though one has pulled my mask off my face before because my snorkel has silver reflective tape on it....) which isn't too bad....... but do you really want to encourage this kind of behaviour in sharks? The minue they start associating humans with food it's bad news in my book. Maybe travelling divers don't care, but for those of us who dive in shark inhabited waters on a weekly basis it really is an issue.
Seeing sharks in their natural habitat behaving in their natural way is an awesome and humbling experience. Why not aspire to that rather than an artificial feeding?
(Sorry, don't mean to be harsh.... but shark feeds really get on my wick!)
