Liveaboard Cairns (Minke Whale Trip) or Lady Elliot

[Elizabeth Chow]

Hi fellow divers - I am currently trying to decide between doing a 4 day Minke Whale Expedition with Divers Den or booking some nights at Lady Elliot and doing some dives and snorkeling there.
It's my first time in Australia and I am coming mid July of this year. Both swimming with Minke Whales or Rays would be great experiences. I will be diving SS Yongala.

Which of the two options would be better?

 

[Aquapro Dive Services]

Both good trips for different reasons. If this is your first time to a coral Reef area then I would go for the Minke trip as it will offer far more variety of diving. The Divers Den trip is Outer Reef as well as Ribbon Reef areas (best of the GBR) and the Minkes are amazing to dive with,

Lady Elliott is still beautiful, but diving is secondary activity in my opinion and different diving. Its a coral cay and so the visibility is less (10-15m) c0mareed to the Outer Reef and Ribbons (15 - 30m). Main draw, as you pointed out, are the Mantas.

 

[Nomad-Diver]

Being in the water with a Minke, and looking them in the eye, is my favourite underwater experience so far.
Unlike looking at a fish or a whale shark etc, the Minke was looking back at me too.
The regular scuba dives on the trip were also fantastic.

 

[codename:DIVE]

I've been on the 4 day Minke trip with Diver's Den several times, the Ribbon Reef dive sites are very good and the Minke's are gorgeous.

I have not been to Lady Elliot, but if you choose the Minke trip you will not regret it.

Yongala is awesome, must do!

 

[Elizabeth Chow]

Thanks for your recommendation. The liveaboard is turning out to be too expensive. Would you have any other recommendations on which liveaboards or day trips would be good for the outer reef?

 

[Aquapro Dive Services]

Yes, and there is already a thread running in this forum that goes over the Cairns options. Suggest you have a read of it here as I posted the Cairns options for day trips to the Outer Reef. PM me if you want specific info on the trips.

Tusa is the number one choice.

 

[Elizabeth Chow]

Thank you! I will take a look. What are your thoughts between Heron island and Lady Elliot for diving and snorkeling? Which one would you recommend?

 

[Aquapro Dive Services]

Its been a very long time since I had anything to do with these islands and used to work off of Dunk Island.

I think there would be others on this thread who may be able to give more accurate, and informative opinions, but if I go with past experiences probably Heron.

 

[TravisD]

I did the Mike Ball Spoilsport Dwarf Minke trip back in 2013 and had a great time. Going as a single, I found that factoring in the costs at the time for room and board on land meant that doing the liveaboard thing wasn't really much more. Exchange rates change though, so YMMV - at the time as I recall, they were unfavorable for someone coming in with USD, so food and such was expensive. Would have been a different equation had it been two or more of us sharing a land-based hotel room compared to paying per-person liveaboard rates.

I happen to really like the liveaboard experience - set gear up once, and not have to schlep it around every day. We had a Minke researcher (Minke Matt) embedded with us for the trip which was very cool. We probably lost a couple of planned dives to snorkeling with the minkes instead, but that's perfectly OK in my book.

Realize that this wasn't on your list originally, but figured I'd throw out my experiences for another data point.

 

[Peter Perkins]

Although I am not hugely experienced I agree that Liveaboard might seem expensive as a 'one time chunk' of money but when you think how many dives you are getting (3-4 in a day) + gear + food + accommodation it turns out to be 'cheap'...