Went diving the Coral Sea over Easter with Mike Ball Dive Expeditions and we got pretty up close with some hungry sharks!
The trip departed from Cairns where we got to meet the crew, the other guest and boarded the vessel “Spoil Sport” where we will be calling home for the next 4 nights. At the meetup area we were greeted by Mike Ball himself, where he told us that there’s been a slight change of plans. Due to the recent cyclone (Cyclone Nathan), some parts of the Ribbon Reef were damaged and hence we would be heading straight to the outer reef instead and doing our entire cruise there. It’s meant to be a rare treat as the vessel seldom head out there due to the ocean conditions. However the ocean conditions were looking good for this trip and we were excited.
Overnight as the boat steamed out to Holmes Reef, the seas got quite choppy with the tall-boy drawers in the cabin sometimes opening and closing by themselves. Thankfully that was all the rough weather that we saw and the seas were pretty calm for the rest of our trip.
The main highlights of the trip was the shark feeding dive which was one the last diving day of the trip. The dive site where we did the shark feeding was the “North Horn” which is at Osprey Reef.
The site is a natural amphitheatre where we sat on the rocks and there’s a huge rock in-front of us. There on that rock, they setup a pulley system where they lowered a basket of tuna heads from the boat into the water. The fish and sharks were circling around the basket as it was lowered. Then the basket was brought infront of us twice in a clockwise direction before being opened. The tuna head were attached to a chain and the chain had a bouy at the end of it. So when the basket was opened, the tuna heads were floating in mid water equal distance apart and were able to observe the sharks in a feeding frenzy! There were black-tip and white-tip reef sharks and even potato cods. Also just a few metres away from the basket, there were grey reef sharks circling the area. The feeding frenzy went on for a while and we were able to witness the sheer power of the sharks as they grab the tuna head and attempt to dislodge it from the chain.
After the feeding frenzy was over and it was safe to leave “our seats”, we went over to the large rock to search for some shark teeth. I was able to find 2! There was also a moray eel in the rock where the feeding frenzy had just happened over head. It was an awesome dive.
The other highlight of the trip was the low altitude flight from Lizard Island back to Cairns! The plane flew no higher than 300m, which I reckon is lower than Bulli pass. The view from above was spectacular and I was even able to spot a large ray from the plane!
Below are some videos of the trip, the first view is just a small snippet of the dive from the professional videographer which was on our trip and the second is a slightly longer video which I’ve put together using some of the images and videos I took during the trip. I highly recommend a liveaboard trip to the Coral Sea!
