December on the Great Barrier Reef 2013

One Way to Find Out
By Captain Trevor Jackson

2014 …..who’d have thought… I remember being back in high school in the early eighties wondering if we would see in the new century….and here we are well into the second decade and going strong. Back then the naysayers had the planet imploding or being struck by an asteroid or starving ourselves of oxygen, or simply disappearing when the computers rolled over into 2000. None of it happened and the world is well quite frankly, a better place now than it was back then. We are more tolerant of others, more supportive of those in need and way way way more aware of our environment. One simply has to peruse any of the pages of any of the social media avenues to see that humans are doing good…and so we should be, we are smart and we are innovative. In my little part of the world looking out through the wheelhouse windows I see the reef as getting better each year…not worse…better!

In 2013 we did so much exploring and discovering it made our heads spin and everywhere we turned …turned to gold….the reefs of FNQ are simply awesome. But there’s no need to take my word for it, the dive site calendar for the coming year on Spoilsport reads like a what’s what of awesomeness. Let me summarize.
The Anzac Day long weekend in April sees Shark Photographer extraordinaire Damien Siviero on board for a week to show you how to get that once in a lifetime shot. Hot on the heels of that we return to the unsurpassable SS Yongala for two weeks in May, with a few other goodies thrown into the mix. Barely back in Cairns for long enough to put fuel in and it’s off into the 2014 Minke season where divers go face to face with the most beautiful creature on earth. From the beautiful to bizarre, July sees us at Osprey Reef trapping Nautilus shellfish for research and giving those on board the chance to photo bomb themselves into the frame. September and November we go back to the best reef dives in the world on our Northern Reef explorer trips, thence to Christmas and the turtles of Raine Island and the wreck of the SS Quetta calls us northwards from her watery haven.

2015 rolls over and it’s straight into Deep Reefs with Professor Simon Mitchell. Simply writing that took my breath away…what will the trips be like? There’s one way to find out…

Rogues Gallery