The dive on our first day was awesome, but not so much the boat ride to Osprey reef. Trent did warn us about a possible rough ride because we were going past the outer edge of the reef into deep open sea where the depth was about 1000 meters. It was an over night boat ride to reach Osprey reef and boy it was a rough ride. After falling asleep in the bed, somewhere around 11 pm we woke up because we were being literally lifted off the bed and being slammed again on the bed. Sometimes it got so bad that it felt like a freefall. Thank goodness for Trent's warning, I had taken my sea sickness pills. I was actually scared because it felt as if the boat was going to possibly sink the way it was riding the big waves. When I went to use the restroom which was all the way in the back of the boat, I could not stand there for long because I was simply terrified. The water was getting in and out in the back of the boat and it was absolutely terrifying. I quickly made my way stumbling along the way into the lower decks where we had our room. It was extremely hard going back to sleep with the crazy ride.
Next morning everyone was talking about the scary night where everyone only slept for a few hour and some couldn't sleep at all. Aparently, it was a rough night of everyone. Anyways, finally we were at Osprey reef (North Horn). This dive site was what I was most excited about. This is where the sharks were :). After the usual morning routine and dive briefing, we went for our first dive of day 2. I was really excited to see the sharks. After swimming around for a while, I was getting a bit antsy not being able to see any sharks around. Just before Gin & I were finishing our dive, we spotted a white tip shark directly under us. Finally, I was happy! It wasn't as exciting as I had expected it would be, but I was just glad that I at least saw one shark.
The second dive of day 2 was the dive most people were waiting for (at North Horn again). The shark feed. I was totally psyched about the shark feed. This is what I came to dive for at Osprey Reef with Taka Dive. At the usual dive briefing, we all jumped in the water and sat on the dead corals forming a semi circle. Trent was the one who had the frozen tuna heads that were chained together in a barrel. When they lowered the barrel, the sharks had already started coming around the barrel. There were already about 10 sharks (white tip, black tip, grey sharks, and oceanic silver what Gin calls the "big mammas") around along with potato cod fishes and loads of other fishes. As soon as Trent opened the barrel, it was a feeding frenzy. The sharks started doing all the work trying to rip apart the frozen tuna heads that were tied to the thick metal chain. You can hear the tearing and ripping of the flesh even under water as the sharks used all their strength to release the tuna heads from the chain. They were swimming and swirming around in a whirlwind about 10 feet away from us. There were times when some of them would get very close to us, only 2 to 3 feet from us. The last tuna head left was the most interesting one. After a white tip successfully ripped the tuna head out of the chain, it lost it's grip and the tuna head slipped out of it's mount. A potato cod came out of no where and grabbed the tuna head in it's mouth. The potato cod was trying to swim away with it's prized tuna head followed by a trail of sharks behind it. There was one scary moment when that potato cod swam directly towards Gin & I. It almost swam right into me. I had to dodge the potato cod swimming towards my head followed by heaps of sharks. When the potato cod made a sudden turn barely missing my head by inches, one of the sharks chasing the potato cod slammed right into Gin's shins. The shark couldn't turn quite as fast as the potato cod. After that nervous moment, the sharks simply backed away and continued it's chase of the potato cod. It was an awesome moment. Trent, the trip director, who was a couple of feet away from us saw what happened and told us later that over the years they've been doing the shark feed, nothing like that ever happened before. It was an amazing experience and I'm glad that both Gin and I weren't hurt in the process. We wished that Chriso would've captured that moment on video. Unfortunately, soon as the last tuna head was off the chain, he stopped filming. Having it on film, we could've relived that moment over and over again. I guess we'll just have to relive that moment by visiting our memories of it. Once the shark feed was over, we continued our dive and saw the sharks gradually dispersing. It certainly was the highlight of diving at the great barrier reef.
After the shark feed, everyone on board was raving about it. None of us had ever experienced anything like that before. Everyone was going through an adrenaline rush after the dive. Who could blame them!
No one thought that anything could live upto the shark feed dive. So the crew decided to go to a dive site that they had never been before. The dive site was called "Mystery wall". I suppose it was a mystery because no one including the crew had dove there before. It turned out to be one of my favorite dive sites. Gin decided to opt out of this dive because it was getting really tiring. Instead I went diving with Stephen who lived in London but was originally from Germany. His fiance Yani had also decided not to go for the dive. We were accompanied by dive master Daniel whom Gin & I thought as a very good resource for diving. He was a dive master, but always gave us feedback about how to improve. He always made sure we had enough air to get back to the surface with a safety stop at 5 meters for 3 minutes. Anyhow the dive was unique to me in the sense that we passed through an opening which I've never done before. It was kind of like a cave, but wasn't an actual cave. It was also a dive site with excellent visibility. As usual I ran out of air much faster than Stephen did, so I went back on the boat while Stephen continued his dive with Daniel.
The last dive of day 2 was one of the best dives of the trip. The dive site was called "The Entrance" because there was an actual cave entrance which we could swim through. We were accompaniced by an instructor from Japan, Tomo. She was excellent at spotting everything and also an excellent navigator. I was a little nervous about going through the cave because of two reasons. First, I couldn't see where we would swim out of since the exit wasn't in sight. Second, caves get a bit tricky because they're narrow and there is a possibility of one of the equipments to get stuck. Luckily everything went smoothly and we had an awesome dive. Tomo tried showing us the garden eel, but our untrained eyes couldn't spot it. There were lots of other fishes around as usual and the coral was just beautiful. We also spotted barracudas and sea squirts. There was no night dives scheduled and in a way I was happy about it. This meant that we had a lot of time just hanging out with other people from our trip. We go and sit on the sun deck and talk about the dives and chillax.
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