Shark!!!

We made it back alive! At one point there were more than fifty sharks in the water with us, some like the white tip reef shark in this shot - she was only about a meter and a half away when I took this photo.

There were also tens of grey whalers that although not usually a worry to man, when they eat they put in some serious agro! They wip their heads from side to side in an absolute frenzy.

Most exciting was an oceanic silvertip that was about three and a half meters long and scary, swam into the rocky amplitheatre we were hiding in - looked at us and swam off... very cool.

There was also a hammerhead cruising about but sadly Virginie and I missed him - or may have seen her tail, but not the classic view of her head.

We had the most incredible trip. 14 dives in 4 days, more than 100 miles off the coast out in the Coral sea on offsprey reef.

Some of the most incredible, stunning reef diving in the world. Well we would say that but then everyone has gone on about the great barrier reef for years so we thought we had to see it for ourselves and if we were going to do it, might as well do it properly.

Apparently lots of the dive sites near Cairns are suffering from the amount of poor divers damaging the coral and the run off from the city etc, and as we came back down the coast you could really see the difference in the colour of the coral.

Anyway, we loved it!

Virginie on a sunrise dive

My love showing how calm she appears in the water, and how she prepares for the dive...

We don't want to bore you with putting thousands of fish photos so here are a few of the ones that we thought you might appreciate. (Yes, first I got the camera then we figured if we were doing this trip we might as well have the underwater housing to go with it...)

Fire flame shell - looks like it has an electric current running in its mouth, works as a lure for little fish, and next to it a scriveled box fish - just because it looks cute.

A lion fish and my love pretending to be one...

This would have been a good dinner!

Hope you are all still well and look forward to seeing you in September! Take care, Love Us