Over the decades I’ve been fortunate to visit many Great Barrier Reef dive sites working on reef stories for various publications … but this one spot – the Fish Bowl at the Sno Dive Site at Opal Reef out from Port Douglas visited whilst working for the Courier Mail just before Christmas … is really something else !
Just before my visit the BBC selected this very reef spot and spent two weeks here filming a documentary and searching for the ultimate reef footage and ‘money shot’.
In this pic made on a Nikon D4s in a Ewa Marine housing, Heather Baird – a 23 year old dive master from the reef boat Calypso – is swimming amongst an amazing variety of corals.
Lets hope the threats of global warming, coral bleaching, ocean acidity, fertiliser runoff … and the crown of thorns star fish … do not impact this beautiful irreplaceable environment.
(September 2016 Update – I returned to the Sno Dive Site. It appears that the vivid colours of the coral in this image from December 2015 MAY have been due to the coral being ‘under stress’ from sustained high water temperature … as the bleaching process began. Certainly, on my return to Sno there were no corals showing such intense colouration.)
Image © Brian Cassey 2015
