Diving Australias Great Barrier Reef is something that virtually every scuba diver aspires to do at least once in their life. The best way to experience it is on a liveaboard diving trip. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest single structure on the planet built by living organisms. It stretches for over 2,000 km from north of Cairns & Port Douglas in North Queensland to Lady Elliot Island & Fraser Island in the south & it is clearly visible from space. It is home to thousands of species with others still being discovered, hosting over 400 different types of Coral and 500 different varieties of Mollusc including many types of Giant Clams & Cone Shells. For the SCUBA diver it is an absolute paradise. You could spend your entire lifetime liveaboard diving the Great Barrier Reef and you still would not have come close to covering all the spectacular dive sites it offers. It is composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and over 900 islands and it covers over 340,000 Square Kilometers so it's easy to see how you could devote your entire life to diving it and still never see it all.

The barrier reef is a good distance offshore so there is considerable cruising time to get there and back even in the faster diving boats. The best way to dive it is on a liveaboard from Cairns and spend as many nights as you can afford (both time and money wise) to dive this wonder of the world. A Cairns liveaboard is a far better use of your time, far more relaxing, offers far more dives and also offers you the chance to night dive. It fully justifies the time spent travelling to the reef and back for the amount of diving you get. It can also be quite economical as every night you spend on the dive boat you don't spend money on your hotel room or on eating and drinking. Food and drink (usually non-alcoholic) is included on Cairns liveaboard diving trips.