AD 2018 Q1

& REWARDING
AUSTRALIA’S FAR NORTHERN GREAT BARRIER REEF
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY STEPHEN FRINK
en years ago I stood on a dive
platform above the Great Detached
Reef in the far north of Australia. We had
departed from Cairns, the portal to the best
tropical diving in Queensland, and dived some of
the Great Barrier Reef’s most iconic sites along the
Ribbon Reefs, including Pixie Pinnacle, the Cod Hole
and others. But instead of returning to Cairns, we kept
cruising north to visit remote sites divers rarely reach.
Unfortunately, the captain soon reported the approach
of heavy weather: Cyclone Guba was headed in our
direction. It had already taken 149 lives in nearby
Papua New Guinea and was not to be trifled with. We
hastily evacuated, leaving the far north for another day.
That other day came in November 2017. It was the
kind of project I had to plan well in advance to make
happen. With only a few liveaboards serving the region
and the cruising season being only a few months
long, there were not a lot of options for a whole-boat
charter. I booked the liveaboard for the expedition two
years before our scheduled departure. During that time
the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was in the news, and the
reason was not good.
The water was especially warm in the summer of
2016, and the corals were bleaching. The GBR was
only one of many reefs around the world suffering
coral bleaching, and this was not the first time divers
were seeing large amounts of hard corals turned
white from the expulsion of their symbiotic algae
(zooxanthellae). (To learn more about coral bleaching,
see AlertDiver.com/Chasing_Coral and AlertDiver.com/
Coral_Bleaching_Coral_Mortality.)
As those articles explain, bleached corals are stressed
but not necessarily dead. Favorable changes in water
temperature, salinity, turbidity or whatever factor
caused the stress can allow the reef to recover. Despite
that reality, the editorial coverage that seemed to most
influence public perception of the GBR’s health was its
obituary in Outside magazine in October 2016, a bit of
satire that went viral. The article was wry and clever,
68 | WINTER 2018