My recent Mike Ball expedition aboard Spoilsport looked ominous only a week or so before the trip. Cyclone Yasi was wreaking havoc in fair North Queensland and it seemed people would be lucky to have a home, let alone me getting on a boat. Ultimately though, Cairns, Spoilsport and the parts of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea we visited showed little if any signs that a category 5 cyclone had raged through the region only days earlier. We set out of Cairns with calm seas, clear skies and eagerly excited about what was to come in the next week.

I took the opportunity to dive on my closed-circuit rebreather (CCR), as Mike Ball’s CCR service makes it all too easy to dive closed circuit for the trip. Spoilsport has been recently setup with everything a CCR diver would want including O2, booster, fill panel, sets of 2-3L cylinders and sorb which is kindly organised by Mike Ball staff upon request to suit specific units. Net result was that I turned up and could concentrate on what mattered (having fun and taking photos), knowing that CCR logistics had been taken care of for me. In addition to the spacious dive deck Spoilsport offers, Mike’s setup a dedicated CCR station which is perfect for assembling a unit and boosting gas.

The 7 Night Coral Sea Safari trip would take us through the outer Great Barrier Reef (Ribbon Reef #10), out to the stunning Osprey Reef and finally back down through Ribbon Reef #3. Each section of the trip provided a unique opportunity to shoot macro, wide angle and everything in between. First up was the famous Cod Hole, where I felt like one of those rodeo clowns trying to chorale a 200kg potato cod into a photographic position with my friendly model Rebecca. You’d be surprised how dam hard it is to get them to go where you want, particularly when they’re so close to you that all you see is the massive eye starring back at you.

The surface weather was spectacular, so we quickly continued onto the Coral Sea where Osprey Reef held up to its reputation for gin clear water. We dived at Shark Reef first up, which had some of the clearest ocean water I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Dog tooth tuna, reef sharks and schooling fish covered the reef and provided a great opportunity to practice wide-angle shark shooting techniques before the shark dives at North Horn.

Shooting sharks (as always) was the name of the game and North Horn certainly didn’t disappoint. Grey reefs, whitetips and a few curious, but ever so impressive silvertips graced our presence for the shark feed. Armed with shark shooting techniques and practical skills from the workshop, DSLR and P&S shooters both managed to grab some great shots which could be seen in the trip photo competitions. A second shark dive at North Horn that afternoon resulted in an exciting drift dive along the wall. With bait in the water (but no feed) the sharks were around and the infamous plastic bottle trick brought them in close, with even a hammerhead lurking in the distance. The freedom of CCR allowed me to stay deeper whilst smaller silvertips came in at relatively close range and even smaller grey reefs came right up to us on command with the crack and pop of the bottle in the water. A tip for younger players is to check your camera settings after resting your camera on your knees to do the plastic bottle trick with two hands; unknowingly switching to aperture vs priority mode on a shark dive is quite uncool and not something I’m going to mention again!

Fast Eddies (aka Around the Bend) provided one of the most exiting dives of the trip for me with sharks, fish, spectacular reef scenes and even a manta ray thrown in to boot. You drop in up current along a wall that eventually comes to an apex with current flowingfrom both directions. Very Palau-ish in layout but with much more colourful and busy reef scenes, the site buzzes with sharks on and off the wall and the place comes alive. Perched on top of the reef, you seemingly want to stay there forever but the 30-40m sites cuts your time short and eventually spits you out onto a shallower reef where the crew diligently pick you up in the inflatables.

With the thrills of Osprey behind us we proceeded onto Lizard Island where we had some guests depart and others come on board. The visibility had reduced from the 30-50 metres that we had in the Coral Sea, but this didn’t faze us as macro photography was now the focus. Clown fish, tiny pipe horses, glass shrimp and anything else exciting and smaller would be stared at with intensity through the viewfinder. Lighthouse and Steve’s bommie provided literally hours of entertainment as we twisted our way up the pinnacles.

A big thank you to the fantastic crew of Spoilsport and the other guests for making this such a great trip!

Click here for a full collection of images.