Tale of two reefs

OSPREY DAYS

Osprey Reef sits in the middle of nowhere. Its highest point is just inches above the surface of the Coral Sea. The closest piece of land, Lizard Island, is more than 100 miles away. The ocean barely pauses as it passes over this coral rampart. Underwater, though, it’s a gathering place and waypoint for everything that passes through this part of the world.

On our first dive, at Around the Bend, we descended into an improbable wonderland. Thick forests of red and yellow soft coral trees lined a canyon that our group passed through. When we slipped over a coral outcropping at 120 feet, a giant manta ray was hovering in the current as a phalanx of cleaning fish crawled over its elegant wings and into its gill slits and mouth. On the wall that slipped off into the deep blue under the manta, whitetip reef sharks meandered past. The wall was so thick with sea fans and soft corals that it seemed impossible to accommodate even one more.

As we headed back to shallow water, several hammerheads circled a lucky cluster of our group. During the safety stop at the bottom of the mooring line I slowed down enough to watch as fire gobies hovered above their homes in the coral rubble, long-finned and bluestreak gobies darted about, sixbar wrasse and orange-lined triggerfish lit up the reef with their wild colors and an octopus played hide-and-seek.

The Aussie divemasters called it “a bit of a slow day.” Finally, an understatement I could appreciate. I was beginning to understand that the only way to comprehend the vastness encompassed by both the Great Barrier Reef and Australia was to take it in small, easily digestible bits.

Ty Sawyer / Sport Diver

The next morning, just as we were all waking up, the captain spotted something he’d never seen in 25 years of cruising these waters: a pod of orcas. We all lined the rail watching the whales breach and dive under the boat. “If you write this,” said the captain, “you absolutely must say this never happens. Otherwise, guests will show up asking for the orcas. Could be a bit of a disappointment.”

We were scheduled to do the shark-feed dive that day at North Horn. Among shark aficionados it’s a place of worship, a temple of the requin. Normally, the site is packed with whitetip and gray reef sharks, but when we got in the water, there were only about 40 or 50 of them lolling about, a “disappointing” number that the captain attributed to the presence of the orcas. Although the divemasters seemed genuinely put off by the “low” turnout, not a diver among us knew the difference, and the water still seemed filled to its very edges with eager sharks. When the fish parts were released, the sharks went wild, as did several of the resident potato cod — they muscled in, shoved and pushed the sharks aside to get their share. It was obvious from their girth that they’ve had no problem pushing around their toothy cousins. For about 10 minutes, we could hear the crunch of teeth on fish heads. Afterward the divers searched the bottom for sharks’ teeth, a keepsake for the kids.

After our edge-of-the-earth experience at Osprey, we overnighted to the Ribbon Reefs, right on the edge of the continental shelf.

Almost all of the dive briefings in this part of the world include the term “world- famous,” and our first dive in the Ribbons was at “world-famous Steve’s Bommie.” Like so much on this trip, “world-famous” turned out to be an understatement here, too.

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