Exploring the far north of the Great Barrier Reef

While many areas of this natural wonder of the world are easily accessible on day boats, from island resorts, or via a liveaboard, one region is rarely visited: the Far Northern Reefs.

The Far Northern expanse starts north of the popular Ribbon Reefs and extends all the way to Papua New Guinea, a 600km stretch that remains largely unexplored, a remote area only accessible on a liveaboard boat, and then they only journey there during October, November and December, a time when calm weather conditions prevail.

Only a handful of liveaboard boats offer trips to the Far Northern Reefs; one is the wonderful Spirit of Freedom.
The Spirit of Freedom is a luxurious 37m long vessel operating out of Cairns that usually runs trips to the Ribbon Reefs and Osprey Reef. But each year they also do seven day trips to the Far Northern Reefs and in October last year I was lucky enough to join one of these adventures.

State of the coral

My Spirit of Freedom trip to the Far Northern Reefs was a superb adventure, and I was very happy to see the hard corals alive and well. Prior to the trip I was concerned about the state of the corals since there has been two recent coral bleaching events on the northern section of the reef. Some scientists had reported a quarter of the coral in the region was dead, (though based on only 83 surveyed reefs) and even worse, some media reports were that the entire reef north of Port Douglas was dead. It proved a great relief to find the reefs we dived on were healthy and alive, and spectacular.

First I had to fly 600km north of Cairns to join the boat.

Anchored at the small settlement of Portland Roads. North again from there our checkout dive was on a site called Auriga Bay at Southern Small Detached Reef.

"… A highlight was the cave dive at Big Woody, a peninsula with walls on both sides and a cave cutting right through it covered in exquisite corals of every imaginable colour…"

Here we explored coral gardens and a wall dropping into the abyss. Down the wall we see lovely gorgonians, soft corals and whip corals, Maori wrasse, sweetlips, snappers and schools of parrotfish. In the shallows too, were pretty coral gardens with good collections of reef fish and invertebrates. This was a great start, but more impressive sites were to follow.

Highlights of 10 dives

Over the next week we explored 10 reefs: walls, pinnacles and many, very pretty coral gardens. The walls in this part of the reef are festooned with gorgonians and beautiful soft corals patrolled by pelagic fish and sharks. At Black Rock we encountered schools of barracuda, trevally and snapper, and were buzzed by several large silvertip sharks. At Epic the sharks followed us as we explored the wonderful gorgonian fans.

A highlight was the cave dive at Big Woody on Wood Reef, a peninsula with walls on both sides and a cave cutting right through it, covered in exquisite corals of every imaginable colour.\

"… The best of the stunning coral gardens were dominated by healthy, hard corals and abundant reef fish. These were at Perisher Blue, Turmoil, Aladdin’s Cave and especially Well Worth It, a sensational dive.…"

The best of the stunning coral gardens which were dominated by healthy, hard corals and abundant reef fish, were at Perisher Blue, Turmoil, Aladdin’s Cave and especially Well Worth It. This last one is a sensational dive. We started the dive exploring caves and ledges lined with gorgonians and buzzing with barracuda, trevally, mackerel and gropers. But then we spent much of our time drifting over endless fields of hard corals, where reef fish and whitetip reef sharks were darting about, and where, on a second visit, a lucky group of divers encountered a small whale shark.

At Stella and Plates On Parade we saw lovely corals and a good variety of reef fish and invertebrates. At Stella we also saw reef sharks and a tawny nurse shark, while at Plates On Parade the highlight was the best collection of plate corals I have ever seen.

Another highlight was an afternoon diving the wonderful Raine Island, the largest and most important green turtle nesting site in the world. As you might imagine we saw plenty of turtles, including a mating pair, but we also encountered reef sharks, pelagic fish, Maori wrasse and several small epaulette sharks.

The hard corals at Raine Island are wonderful; short, squat and packed together to endure rough seas.

Towering pinnacles a favourite

My favourite sites were two towering pinnacles at Great Detached Reef. The first we explored was Deep Pinnacle, which rises from 60m to 14m. This twin peak pinnacle is covered in soft corals and gorgonians, and alive with schooling fish and sharks, as well as home to many small critters. Here I concentrated on the small stuff – the pipefish, boxfish, nudibranchs, flatworms, blennies and hawkfish.

The tower of coral that is simply called The Pinnacle was just as good. As it rose to 4m it gave us a much longer bottom time. Here the macro critters won the day with anemonefish, leaf scorpionfish, pufferfish, octopus and numerous sea slugs.

Over the final days we headed south, with our last day spent on the Ribbon Reefs before returning to Cairns. Here we explored Google Gardens and Steve’s Bommie, both wonderful. But unfortunately Steve’s Bommie was not a good as my last visit there six years ago; this amazing pinnacle is suffering from cyclone damage and coral bleaching, still a brilliant dive though, and fingers crossed it will return to its former glory.

More information contact: www.spiritoffreedom.com.au

INFO - SNIPPET

Weather improvingDuring the week on the Far Northern Reefs we experienced a mixed bag of conditions. It was windy, choppy and overcast at the start but calm, sunny and clear by the end. Visibility also varied greatly, from 12m to 40m plus, due to tidal flows and recent rains. The water temperature varied from 26°C to 27°C.

www.nigelmarshphotography.com