The Great Barrier Reef keeps on living

Amen from me.

The article in The Australian is accompanied by a beautiful photo of vibrant healthy coral, which even Barack Obama might like. But it is another image on the AIMS website of a diver clinging to a "manta board" that set my mind in its version of Dr Who's TARDIS back to the mid '70s when I was on a reporting assignment to a famous international reef destination at Heron Island off Gladstone in Central Queensland.

The "assignment" was one I gave myself as editor of the Gladstone Observer, partly because I liked to be involved in our news coverage but probably more because I loved the reef and have done ever since excursions as a teenage snorkeler and spearfisherman off various coral atolls that dot its 2,300 km stretch from north Queensland to Lady Elliot Island in the south.

This time I was meeting up with some officials from the fledgling Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and some international scientists conducting coral studies at the Heron Island Research Station, which shares space on the atoll with the international tourist resort.

They invited me onboard a vessel engaged in the research by towing a diver with a manta board behind the boat. And incredible as it may seem with today's strictly governed workplace safety rules and official red tape, when I mentioned my earlier diving experience, they asked if I would like to try my hand at manta boarding.

Would I? You betcha!

Some basic instructions - press down on the front to dive, press down on the back to rise, just let go and rise to the surface if in any difficulty, then I was over the side and cruising along over an abundance of lovely plate corals, staghorns, soft corals and a plethora of marine life including some turtles wondering what this weird interloper was.

Diving down among the fish, swallowing to equalise ear pressures, then zooming back up to the surface, it sure beat the normal dive progress.

Finally, back on the boat I was towelling myself when the skipper nonchalantly asked, "Did you see any sharks?"

"Yes, just a few small 'Reefies' checking me out from a distance."

"That's good but we did see a White Pointer out here a few days ago…"