Snorkelling the outer Great Barrier Reef

This post is part of a series called Great Barrier Reef

Snorkelling the Playground/Shark Mountain, Norman Reef
Snorkelling Wildside Central, Norman Reef
Snorkelling Norman Fingers, Norman Reef
Snorkelling the outer Great Barrier Reef

This post is about snorkelling the outer Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Barrier Reef, located in the Coral Sea, off the east coast of Queensland Australia. It is one of the world’s seven natural wonders and a World Heritage Area, protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The reef is separated from the coast by a channel 160km wide and 60 metre deep (in some places).

The reef houses the world’s largest collection of coral reefs and considered by the WWF as the ‘biggest living structure on the planet’ spanning over 344,000 square kilometres. It has over 2,900 individual reef systems, 760 fringe reefs, 600 tropical islands, 300 coral cays providing for over 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusc.

The Great Barrier Reef has been and continues to be an important part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s cultures and spirituality. It was Matthew Flinders who named the reef and the other reefs within it, and that’s what we know it as today.

Reefs on the outer Great Barrier Reef

We visited Norman and Hastings reefs, both located on the outer Great Barrier Reef.

To see a lot of reef in a short amount of time we stayed on a liveaboard – a ‘hotel’ boat specially designed for divers and snorkellers. If you’d like to know more, here’s some great information on liveaboards..

About Norman and Hastings reefs

Norman Reef is located about 80 km from Cairns. It lies on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, on the continental shelf. Its depth varies between 10 to 20 metres. It is north of the larger Hastings Reef and sits between Spur, Onyx and Saxon Reef. It is the most northern reef visited by tour operators.

Hasting Reef is located about 50 km from Cairns. It covers about ten square kilometres, it’s shaped like a horseshoe and its average depth is about 13 metres. It’s a popular snorkelling site because the top of the reef sits in about one to three metres of water.

For both sites, there are plenty shallow coral gardens and rolling hills of soft and hard corals to explore. Corals range from white and purple staghorns to multi-coloured (orange, pink, blues). The marine life is special. Green turtles and hawkbill turtles, moray eels, the smallest and largest of fish (like maori wrasse, groupers, trigger fish and cod) and sharks.

Getting there

To get to the outer Great Barrier Reef, we flew to Cairns and boarded a transfer vessel at the Cairns marina at 7.30 am. The transfer boat took us on a two hour journey to a liveaboard moored, in what seemed to be, the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.

As mentioned above, a liveaboard is especially designed for divers and snorkellers. Because it’s a floating ‘hotel’, five times a day you just step off the back of the boat and dive or snorkel under the watchful eye (and whistle if you’re out of the 80 metre snorkelling zone!) of the tour operator. If you’re a diver, you can even choose a night dive.

Stepping off the liveaboard.

Our tour operator – Reef Encounter

There are a handfull of liveaboard operators on the Coral Coast and we chose Reef Encounter because (from its website) it seemed to give equal credence to snorkellers and divers. We wanted to snorkel – not dive – and we needed an operator that was going to allow for that experience.

Reef Encounters accommodation / catamaran on the outer reef.

We were mostly happy with our experience – the staff are exceptional. Unfortunately for us, however, our planned trip landed on the backend of two cyclones.

This meant that the rough seas and the lack of safe moorings limited the captain’s choices. Ultimately it meant we were restricted in what we could and couldn’t see.

Unbeknown to us at the time, the multitude of tourist operators lease moorings for 99 years. And the Reef is full of them 😔. It heightened our awareness that the Great Barrier Reef copes with hundreds of people swimming, snorkelling, diving the reef every day.

Staying on the liveaboard

We stayed on the liveaboard for five nights (we’d recommend four is enough). At least two and a half of those days we were stuck on a part of Norman Reef called Wildside Central. The rest of the time we visited Fingers and Playgrounds/Shark Mountain on Norman Reef and Wilside Blue Lagoon on Hastings Reef.

Wildside Central is great for divers, but crappy for snorkellers. However, it gave us a good idea of what’s happening to the reef, from cyclones and climate change. The shallows were full of dead coral. We were saddened to see the damage and many discussions on the boat ensued about whether the Australian Government, businesses and people are serious about damage to the reef caused by climate change.

Aside from that, the Reef Encounter staff were excellent! They are very friendly and accommodating people and they did their best to ensure that everyone had a great time. Here are some of their friendly faces.