I need some help.
I'm a Canadian who will be visiting Australia this June with my wife. We will only have 1 week's time to do some diving while we are there and we're still trying to figure out where the best place to go would be. The two front-running ideas right now are either to do a liveaboard on the outer Great Barrier Reef / Coral Sea or to travel all the way out west to spend some time on the Ningaloo reef.
For background purposes, we are cold water divers (Great Lakes and St. Lawrence river - shipwrecks) primarily interested in seeing some interesting wildlife while in Australia. Manta Rays and other large animals would be of particular interest. It would also be nice to experience some variety (ie different kinds of wildlife/terrain/ecoenvironment) rather than to spend the week doing a bunch of similar dives.
Our salt-water diving experience thus far is limited to 2 dives in Costa Rica (Pacific side) and about 20 or so dives in the Caribbean Sea.
I would appreciate hearing different people's opinions on what I should choose. Feel free to suggest other options if you think I'm leaving out something really good.
Thanks.
Kyle
Contributed by canuckdiver added 2004-04-21