They say better late than never… It’s been a few weeks since my Coral Sea trip but I’ve finally got around to posting a report. I spent a week on Mike Ball’s Spoilsport, which is an excellently decked out boat, having just come back from an annual refit. We steamed from Cairns for the Coral Sea via the Cod Hole and then back through the Ribbon Reefs. Whilst the surface weather wasn’t the best, the conditions underwater were top notch. 

The brief I got was quite simple – get shark shots. With that in mind I had a few days up my sleeve to put my relatively new Canon 7D through its paces. With the camera sorted I assembled the Sport Kiss CCR I was using and was off to a flying start in the 27 degree water. 

Although rough, we eventually got to the Coral Sea and it didn’t disappoint. With 30m visibility, pristine coral and fish everywhere it was all on. I took some nice shots of some circling big eye trevally in the morning before hitting the shark dive in the afternoon. My weapon of choice was the Canon 28mm f/1.8 with the 6” Aquatica dome and 12+9” arms on each side. The old faithful DS-125s provided the light with enough cycle time to handle the high burst mode as well (on 1/8th power at least anyway). 

On the shark feed it was on for young and old – sharks were everywhere. The estimate was around 40 sharks, mostly grey reef though there were a few bigger silvertips amongst them. To be honest, I was so busy shooting that I didn’t really have time to soak in the sharks but I did bag a few keepers throughout the dive. As quick as it started it ended, but that’s when you get nice shots of sharks swimming out in the blue, yet still in photographic range. I followed a pack of grey reefs down to about 40-45m, which was cool as they kept buzz past me. 

The next day we did some more dives and then managed to jump on an Undersea Explorer shark dive as they were filming a BBC doco. It was quite interesting to see their entourage underwater, though ultimately they were more interestied in catching a shark for research than the dive at hand so it was all over pretty quickly. We hung around and snapped off more of the same as the grey reefs patrolled the site. 

Heading back through the Ribbon Reefs proved why they have such a reputation. Both Steve’s and Lighthouse bommies were amongst my favourite. Although not as clear as I’d hoped, the critter count at both sites was high.