The highs and lows from a 9 day expedition to the very top end of the Great Barrier Reef. We check in on the coral, fish, sharks, small critters, and of course sea cucumbers and divers. Climate change and coral bleaching are serious threats we often hear about, but this was a rare opportunity to assess reefs that are very seldom visited. Protected by distance and a lack of coastal development, this should be some of the best diving left in the world, see for yourself in this short film. Filmed, edited and narrated by marine biologist and underwater film maker Josh Jensen.
Script :
To answer the burning question “Is the great barrier reef still great” we should break it down into digestible chunks. How’s the coral? Are there fish? Are the fish still making baby fish? How about the top predators? Is it sharky? Are there still dirty fish and cleaners to clean them? Is there small stuff? Are there any cukes left? Cool random stuff? And are there any divers? I’ll answer each of these questions with brand new footage, as I filmed it in October 2023.

To find the answers, I joined the crew and guests on Kalinda on her Far North Expedition.

Over 9 diving days we sampled nearly 300nm of the Great Barrier Reefs most remote sites - pretty much the top third of the GBR. We briefly covered a couple of the well known Ribbon Reefs north of Cairns before hitting the far north reefs as we worked our way to the northern tip of Australia. On the way we hit some amazing reefs, drifted down walls, explored some lagoons, and some cracking pinnacle dives - or bommies as we call them down here. I’ll run through our area of operations and a brief trip summary to show the extent and limits of this glimpse at the GBR. And I’ll break down each of the questions posed earlier - loosely : corals, fish, small critters, sharks and of course cukes.

We started our diving at Ribbon Reef 3 and finished day 1 at Ribbon 10 - the beautiful Pixies Pinnacle. Day 2 was rough and shitty but my old favourite Lighthouse Bommie was even better than I remembered it. We finished the 2nd day at the world famous Cod Hole which was way up there on the shitty scale. 22 years ago it was incredible, 12 years ago it got smashed by a Cyclone but still had some nice bits and big potato cod, on this trip, we saw neither. The reef was recovering with soft corals but the fish have not come back yet. But that’s most of the bad news out of the way.

We hid behind Lizard Island during some funky weather on day 3 and squeezed in some less than stunning dives. These reefs are inshore with not great water clarity or coral health but better than I expected and surprisingly fishy. This was the launch point for our biggest crossing up to the far north proper .
Day 4 we hit the stunning reefs north of the 14th parallel. Most of these reefs don’t even have names - instead the authorities number them. We dived 14-034 which is the 34th reef south of the 14th parallel and then continued working our way north and the diving turned awesome. There were some pretty poor reefs that we had to survey but the diving got steadily better as we went - Tijou Reef, Mantis and Wishbone, and finally Wood and the legendary Great Detached Reef.


So lets start with the coral - researchers are interested in three things - coral cover, coral health, and coral diversity. I was worried about the Ribbon Reefs, but I needn’t have been. By all 3 measures, the corals were scoring well. I started my underwater filming career on these reefs over 20 years ago and have visited not quite regularly since then. We didn’t get to do many of my old favourites but Lighthouse bommie was as good as I’ve ever seen it. Windy weather and some coral survey commitments had us exploring some reefs we wouldn’t have otherwise visited and predictably those reefs were a bit on the shitty side. As our expedition continued north, to rarely dived areas, the health of the reefs we visited was outstanding. Some areas boasted near 100% coral cover. The diversity was great too. One thing I hoped not to see, especially in those remote reefs was bleaching or any signs of it.



Coral bleaching 101. We’ve all heard the headlines and probably know the usual outcome is the widespread death of coral, but as a diver witnessing the slowish process, it’s probably not what you think. I have dived hundreds of reefs that have had hard corals bleach and die. Their skeletons last decades, but a couple of times I have witnessed and filmed the process. I don’t have a before and after but these during shots - coral reefs in the process of bleaching is remarkable. The mechanics are simple if not well understood but most importantly the microscopic plant-like animals called zooxanthellae which give corals most of their energy and brownish colour leave their coral host which makes the corals look almost Wes Anderson colourful. The coral scientists call it flourescence ...