Unguided Diving in Cairns

Great Barrier Reef Diving Without A Guide

Divers Den run unguided diving trips, to and from Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef, every day. The day starts with an 8am check in and returns around 4.30pm. Certified divers can choose up to 3 scuba dives during the day, which still provides time for snorkelling and relaxing. There is also the option for full equipment rental or tanks and weights only. Divers Den visit 2 different reef sites each day and have a wide array of moorings to choose from, which allows them to select the best ones on the day, to maximise your experience pending weather and conditions. On the day of our unguided Cairns diving trip with them, on 19 June 2023, we visited Norman Reef and Michaelmas Reef. But before we dive right in, let’s cover some more basic facts about your unguided diving Cairns day trip with Divers Den. Check-in is on their boat at Cairns Marlin Marina from 8am. Equipment is allocated on boarding and a complimentary morning tea, which consisted of tea, coffee and an array of muffins, was available for self-serve on board the boat. You depart Cairns around 8.30am and briefings are completed on the way to the reef. Divers Den takes snorkellers, introductory divers and certified scuba divers and the briefings for each group are provided separately. You arrive at the first site around 10am – which on our day of travel was at Norman Reef – and enjoy two dives here, before lunch. Being June (which is winter in Cairns) the water temp was around 23 degrees and 5mm shortie wetsuits were provided in conjunction with the dive price.

“Our first dive of the day was at a site called Troppo’s on Norman Reef – we stepped in at 10.37am and climbed out at 11.22am. From the moment we entered and descended, we were astounded at the abundance of marine life. The first photo stop was at a large anemone home to several pink anemonefish, before we cruised along the wall, surrounded by schools of fusiliers streaming through the water around us. There were lots of beautiful soft corals, which you don’t see at every site, as well as sea whips, sea fans, sea squirts and feather stars. The coral cover and diversity was excellent and after completing our safety stop under the boat, with a few big bat fish and red bass, we got out of the water with big smiles on our dials. This 45 minute dive had a maximum depth of 19m.” – Julie Johnston

Scuba Diving At Norman Reef

After a short surface interval, during which the dive crew refilled the tanks, it was straight back into the water for our second dive. This was at the same location, so we skipped the wall and explored the coral lagoon, gardens and bommies. While the bommies varied in size, they were all covered with an interesting array of marine life. Our first stop this time was at one particular bommie that had a healthy cover of branched finger coral, amongst which was a large entacmaea quadricolor anemone, home to lots of red and black anemonefish. Hovering above were several 3 spot black and white damselfish and headband humbugs, darting in and out of the corals. I always find this type of arrangement mesmerising, so we spent a little bit of time watching the unscripted underwater dance routine. Glancing left we saw some diagonal banded sweetlips, which is one of Richard’s favourites, so we made our way over there for a few photos, before continuing to explore – on the look out for some nudibranchs, which our dive buddy Suzanne was keen to find. That’s the beauty of unguided diving Cairns. You can take the time to seek out what interests you most and when you are taking underwater photos, that time is even more important. That’s one of the many reasons we love unguided diving in Cairns, on the Great Barrier Reef.

Continuing on we snapped a selfie and spent the rest of the dive exploring the bommies and swim throughs. There were lots of different types of chromis, in different colours and patterns, and amongst other things we saw a large coral trout, schools of yellow tailed fusiliers, sea cucumbers, fusiliers and butterflyfish. We stopped by the large anemone with the pink anemonefish on the way back to the boat, and shared our safety stop time with some dotted sweetlips and diagonal banded sweetlips. This was another 45 minute dive – in at 11.47am and out at 12.32pm – with a maximum depth of 12m.

Michaelmas Reef , Diving With Your Buddy

While the boat moved to the second reef location for the day, we enjoyed our buffet lunch in the sun on the boat’s second level. The Divers Den boat AquaQuest has 3 levels, the lower level has the main saloon, bar and dive deck, the second level has a combination of shaded and unshaded seating, while the top deck is a sundeck. The self-serve buffet included hot and cold dishes, chicken wings, salads, cold meats and bread. Being winter they also had soup available. Our dive buddy for the day and great mate Suzanne is a vegan and Divers Den were able to provide a separate meal for her, which was a large salad with chickpeas. We had almost an hour between the second and third dives of the day, which allowed us to warm up.

Dive 3 was at Breaking Patches on Michaelmas Reef. The underwater visibility was a little less here than at Norman Reef, but at 10m still provided great diving conditions. It was a day for anemonefish, as on this dive we descended straight on to a bommie with more branched finger coral, with entacmaea quadricolor anemone, which was this time providing ‘home’ for clark’s anemonefish. We explored the coral gardens before heading out along the wall, which again had excellent coral cover with hard and soft corals, feather stars and sea fans. A highlight of this dive was coming across a large school of bumphead parrotfish, and finally spotting one or two nudibranchs. So, we managed to tick off all the items on our ‘to see’ list during our unguided diving Cairns day trip, and in addition dived amongst schools of goldband fusiliers and yellowtail fusiliers, saw some more red and black anemonefish, large giant clams and six banded angelfish. Our dive at Michaelmas Reef lasted 30 minutes and had a maximum depth of 9m.