Dive Review of Calypso dive and snorkel in
Australia/GBR

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Calypso dive and snorkel: "A must-do if you're in Northern Queensland, Australia", Jun, 2023, by Medea Isphording Bern, CA, US ( Reviewer 3 reports). Report 12528.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations	N/A	Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	This was a day-trip only on a huge power catamaran. Despite the fact that there were probably 100 people on the boat, most everyone was well-behaved. There were two families with babies in strollers, but they tried very diligently to keep their gear sequestered. Many many brand-new divers, some having their first post-cert check-out dives. Ages and experience levels were all over the map. We left from Pt Douglas at 8am. It's a 90-minute ride to the Agincourt Reef within the Great Barrier Reef. The ride was smooth on a ship this beamy and heavy though the chop was visible. Some clouds and occasional quick showers kept conversation alive. We were grouped in clusters of 5-8; out of all of the patrons, only about 12 of us were divers. The divemasters did a good job of explaining protocols, dispensing gear, discussing reef awareness. We were an hour out when the head divemaster took my 73-year-old former dive instructor and physician husband aside and told him he might not be able to dive. What?! It was ostensibly because he'd answered truthfully that he takes two different and rather benign medications, but we think it had more to do with his age. Despite his pleading, honest assertion that he's logged over a thousand dives in the past 50 years of diving, and that he'd just had a medical exam with a clean bill (though he unfortunately had not brought a doctor's note) they held fast, even refusing to allow him to talk with their shore doc. Had we known this the day before even, we could have had the doctor's note emailed to our hotel. We were not amused. Our hotel had made this booking for us, so we'd not consulted Calypso's website, which (now, and perhaps also then but we will never know) says that if you take prescription meds you cannot dive. They also refunded his diving surcharge, which we appreciated. So, he snorkeled, in a bright orange vest, while I explored-the diving was great for me but made us both feel horrible that his perhaps one chance to dive the GBR had been preventably thwarted. As far as critters, the most remarkable thing I saw were abundant tunicates on every dive. Advanced bommie structures. Healthy plate corals, blue and purple branch corals, green stag horn corals. A frogfish. Eels. Huge spotted drums and porcupine fish. Two white-tipped reef sharks. Many nudibranchs including a banana. All the usual tropical fish suspects: many different types of parrotfish, butterfly fish, angelfish, plentiful rainbow wrasses.A couple of rays. Scads of sea cucumbers. Neon-lipped clams. A couple of turtles. On the third dive, we were taken on the skiff out to the end of the reef, perhaps a quarter-mile from the boat. On the count of three, the five of us remaining divers backflipped in unison in not gentle chop into the water. The divemaster led us down around a bommie and into open ocean. Literally within what felt like seconds, we were back at the reef near the boat. If he had mentioned we were going to do a drift dive, I did not hear it so was grateful for my experience; if you had not been aware of what we were doing, things were moving so fast and we were so far apart that you may have had a panic attack. Or worse. One aspect of the check in process after each dive/snorkel gave my husband and me pause. Rather than calling roll, before the boat left the site everyone was told to stand in place and not move. Several of the staff counted us. When they agreed that they each had the same, correct number of bodies, then we would cast off. We've all seen 'Open Water.' My husband and I did have our inflatable sausages, but really in the middle of the Coral Sea, who would even notice? Since it worked out and he did have a chance to see some beautiful vistas hovering above the coral, we called it a success. And a good excuse to make another trip to Australia, after we both have medical certificates in hand. A question for everyone is this: should you lie about your prescriptions if you forget your medical cert? If you 'know' you are healthy, is it better to get your dives in and keep your fingers crossed? We talked about this at length afterward.We have actually had dive shop staff tell us to just answer 'no' to all of the medical questions so you don't risk losing out on your diving. And they don't lose out on your revenue. It's a question of ethics, of individual vs community, of how you would feel about putting the operator at potential hazard. While we, in the immediacy of the moment, considered that it would have been better to lie, we quickly determined it is better not to--for our own safety, for the safety of the dive operator and to give those with whom we are diving no reason to have to cut their own trips short. But we'll never ever leave home without medical paperwork again.
Websites	Calypso dive and snorkel
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Caribbean, Hawaii, Society Islands, Australia, Florida, Galapagos
Closest Airport	Cairns	Getting There	We took a non-stop United flight from SFO to Brisbane, then a quick flight from BNE to Cairns
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, windy, dry	Seas	choppy, currents
Water Temp	80-85°F / 27-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	20-80 Ft/ 6-24 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	no
Enforced diving restrictions	infants to us--I'm 64 and my husband is 73-he was probably the oldest person on the boat
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	N/A
What I Saw
Sharks	1 or 2	Mantas	1 or 2
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	There was a basin for cameras. We carry a point and shoot with a housing and flash and it was adequate.

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Dive Review of Calypso dive and snorkel in Australia/GBR

Calypso dive and snorkel: "A must-do if you're in Northern Queensland, Australia", Jun, 2023,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Calypso dive and snorkel in
Australia/GBR