I woke up early because Pro Dive would be picking me up around 6:15am to depart on our dive trip. I had bought an iced coffee and a muffin the previous day at Woolworths so I could have some breakfast, but I wasn't too hungry when I woke up. I went outside the hostel gate to wait for the pickup, and they were only a few minutes late. I was picked up by Veronica, one of the instructors who would be on the boat, and in the bus were Zach, Nathan, and Kevin, three students who were enrolled in the Open Water certification course.

We drove to a few more hotels to pick up more passengers, then we drove to the Pro Dive retail store where our van plus two other vans all checked in and I validated my certification cards. I had paid for Nitrox fills, but for some reason they were missing that from the registration sheet, so I had to pull up the email on my phone, but it was no big deal.

After we all checked in we headed down to the pier and boarded the boat, Scubapro II. Once on board, the chef, Zoe, was busy setting out a light breakfast of cereals, fruit, yogurt, and toast for us to eat right away. As we were eating, the rest of the crew came and introduced themselves: there was Angus the skipper, Ethan the divemaster, Kevin, Pia, and Veronica the instructors, and Gal who was shadowing the instructors to potentially get a job with Pro Dive.

While eating we were given cabin assignments and safety numbers for use when doing roll call. Once we departed from Cairns we were welcome to take our items down to our cabins. My roommate was Ori, an Israeli guy my age who was on Working Holiday in Australia after finishing in the army. He had met Gal in Melbourne and they were traveling together. Angus informed us that the water would be pretty rough as we sail out to the reef, and a lot of people got seasick. Even I started feeling a bit nauseous after 2 hours.

After three hours of sailing we reached Milln Reef where we were going to dive a site called Swimming Pools. They held a briefing on the top deck, where they told us that the students in the Open Water course would be going to the shallow area of the dive site, and they wanted the rest of us to explore the deeper part of the dive site on our first dive. My buddy for the first dive was Ying, a Taiwanese girl who was also a student in the Advanced Open Water course. The two of us also went with Bridgette and Claye, an Australian couple who were also doing the Advanced Open Water course, since none of us had ever gone on a dive without a guide before. We got our gear equipped and went in search of Cigar Bommie, which Ethan had instructed us to find. We swam for probably 20 minutes in one direction and were oblivious to the fact that we certainly went the wrong way, as the water was much too deep where we ended up and we never saw the bommie. We were low on air so we had to surface and swim back to the boat up there. Since Angus could see us, he sent Ethan out in the tender to give us a tow back. Once we got back to the boat, we realized we didn't want a similar situation to happen again, so we would spend the next couple of dives practicing underwater navigation.

The second dive I was again buddies with Ying. This time we were going to the shallow section of the same dive site, Swimming Pools. We saw tons of colorful coral, a few giant clams, tiny blue tangs (Dory) and clown fish. We followed a big wall of coral until we found a section with three white-tipped reef sharks. We also saw a yellow trumpetfish, a ray, and a giant angel fish along the way back.

Before the first dive the boat relocated to Petaj Bommie, another dive site at the same reef (Milln Reef). The third dive I went in a group of three with Ying and her friend Nathan, who would also be doing the Advanced Open Water course, but had been accompanying the regular Open Water course the past couple of dives as a refresher. This dive we focused mostly on underwater navigation, so we swam in a straight line for about fifteen minutes looking for sharks, then swam back in the reciprocal direction. We were pleased to make it right back to the boat! We then picked a couple other headings, swam until we couldn't see the boat, and returned. We saw lots of clown fish and parrotfish. Nathan and Ying had worked together at the Green Island Resort for the past few months and got to do a lot of diving and snorkeling around there, and they both said that they were really impressed by the beauty of the coral on this dive.

After dinner everyone who was not in the Open Water course went on a night dive. It turns out that this was everyone's first night dive, so we were split into two groups: the Advanced Open Water course went with instructor Kevin, and the rest of the divers went with Ethan. It was really cool to go diving at night because all the really big fish are out. I wasn't able to bring my camera on this dive or the other four certification dives for the Advanced Open Water certification. As we descended we saw some grey reef sharks circling near the boat. There were tons of red bass, and they are smart enough to use our flashlights to help them find food: if we shine our light on a fish, they will go eat it (Kevin told us we were only allowed two kills and two assists). We also saw a lot of giant trivellay, which are a bit scary looking. The coolest part was definitely when a shark swam right next to me!

After a thrilling night dive I had to stay up late to do all the coursework for the Advanced Open Water course, because the PADI website had been broken for the past week, so I could only do it with the physical copy of the book that was kept on the boat. A combination of motion sickness and disorientation in the dark meant that I was pretty nauseous by the time the dive ended, so I was up for a couple hours feeling not too great but the coursework was a good distraction.