The potato cods are gentle giants. And inquisitive. Some weigh more than 50 kilograms, which almost as much as some of the scuba divers diving among them.
They were more fascinating than unnerving. Creatures under the sea have far more to fear from humans than humans have from them. (More of that anon.) The only reason to move away is because we might hurt the cod rather than they hurt us. The poor cod can develop ulcers if humans touch them because touching can strip away their protective mucus cover and leave them exposed to infection and ulcers.
The potato cod is not common on the reef, except at one or two places, notably the Cod Hole, out from Lizard Island, north of Cooktown. The Cod Hole is one of the best diving places on the reef.
The cod are more than inquisitive. They know that divers mean food. The diving tours are allowed to feed them under strict guidelines so that they don’t become dependent. As soon as we enter the water the cod gather around and follow us like silent sheep following a farmer with feed.
The silence of the reef is only broken by breath and bubbles. Stop breathing and there is no sound, a least at first. Then as the quiet makes your hearing more acute you can hear parrot fish using their hard (beak-like) front teeth crunching into the reef. For them it is food. The silence makes sight more acute, too. Yellow, orange, red and green. The best is at night. Then the parrot fish find crevices in the reef in which to sleep, covering the entrance with white fibrous mucus to protect themselves from predators without.
There is only one way to see the reef.
The difference between snorkelling and scuba diving is like the difference between taking a low flight over Paris or London and seeing the city by walking its streets.
And the outer reef is better than the inner.
Indeed a report by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority last year reported that a quarter of the inner reefs were profoundly affected by bleaching, and 90 per cent of it was affected at least partially.
There are several theories about the causes of bleaching, whether it is triggered by increases in water temperature and or carbon dioxide in the water. In any event when the coral gets stressed it expels the algae that gives it its varied colours.
As carbon dioxide increases in the ocean calcification decreases. Calcification is essential for reef. The increased carbon dioxide is having an effect a bit like osteoporosis in humans.
The outer reef, particularly in the far north, is faring much better than the inner and more southern reef. I saw only a very small amount of bleaching in my 11 dives, but I saw a fair amount of broken staghorn coral.
But don’t get me wrong. The overwhelming impression is one of abundant sea life.
I went on a live-aboard diving boat, Nimrod III, from Cairns to Lizard Island and a flight back low over the reef. It was four nights and three full days, allowing for 11 dives, including two night dives. (Novices can do introductory dives.) The coral comes out in more glorious colour at night and other life has done a change of shift. Sea cucumbers, sea urchins, starfish and crustaceans move about at night.
The beauty of the live-aboard is there is less rush than the typical day trip and no shuttling in small boats as happens on the islands, and more variety of reef. But the islands have the advantage of seeing terrestrial and avian life.
A huge topic of conversation going to the outer reef was the missing American divers.
Looking at the practice on Nimrod III it seems beyond belief that someone could have been left behind. The divemaster ensured that each diver signed in and out of the water. There was no relying on a mere head count.
In the Americans’ case the skipper of the boat was been charged with manslaughter. No doubt the court will be looking at the question of whether a skipper is entitled to rely on the divemaster not to leave someone behind, much as a skipper relies on the cook not to poison the guests. After all, you’d expect the skipper to be concentrating on keeping the boat afloat and on course and worrying about the weather.
A whole lot of evidence about the divers’ dairies, which was taken from the public eye at the coroner’s inquest, might shed some light at the trial.
In the usual perverse Australian way, divers were making bizarre references and jokes about it, just like the dingo jokes.
People can be quite irrational as well a perverse when confronting events like that. When I told people I was going on a diving trip to the outer reef, they thought I was mad and that it would be almost inevitable I would be left behind. (Incidentally, I’m back.) The biggest risk is driving to the airport, as usual. Scuba diving is a low-risk activity, mainly because safety is uppermost of everyone’s mind, whereas it seems to be the last things on the mind (if they have one) of some of the lunatics we see on the road.
Since the divers were lost, every diver on the reef gets a safety bag. It is a bright orange, tough-quality narrow garbage bag, about a metre long. You can blow it up, or let the wind fill it for you. Twist the end and pull it under the water a few centimetres to the rest of the inflated bag sits upright. A metre of bright orange can be seen kilometres away.
Enough of danger.
The joy of scuba diving is the silent, weightless drift through a natural wilderness. It is all nature. On land, there is always a sign of human interference. The coral reef is like a gardener’s garden. Every element has its place and is in place.
And then it rained and tropical rain. The surface of the sea was a translucent ceiling with the rain falling on it and bouncing away. It did not fall on us below. We did not get rained on in that nature’s own garden.
Though human interference is not obvious it is still there.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, responsible for 350,000 square kilometres, does constant study of the effects of tourism, fishing and on-shore activities like agriculture. That study intensified with a 25-year program begun in 1994, with $50 million allocated in the first seven years.
There are pesticide run offs, coastal development, agriculture, river sediment, fishing and tourism to worry about.
As a result of earlier studies, including one by the CSIRO, the Federal government took action on fishing earlier this year, increasing the fine for illegal prawn trawling from $10,000 to $1 million is year and boosting enforcement funds by $3.4 million. All legal trawlers to have satellite monitoring systems and more ecological friendly trawl systems.
The industry was irate.
Tourism is coming under greater scrutiny. Tourists so often destroy the thing they come to see. Tour operators can no longer anchor. They must tie to fixed buoys, so there is no damage to the reef. And everything brought in, must be carried out.
It would be sad and perhaps alarmist to urge people to see the Great Barrier Reef before it is too late on the account of the greenhouse effect and other human threats, but the advice would be right anyway. Even if the reef continues to exist in all its glory for decades to come seeing it would have been worth the experience. And (within reason) the more people who experience it, the more people who will realise it is worth spending money to preserve and protect it.