Dive Review of Mike Ball Spoilsport in
Australia/Coral Sea

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Mike Ball Spoilsport: "Good diving in the Coral Sea", Oct, 2014, by Robert & Gayle, OR, US ( Contributor 13 reports with 2 Helpful votes). Report 8026 has 2 Helpful votes.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Mike Ball Dive Expeditions does not pick you up at your hotel. You make your way to their office some time during the day to drop off your luggage. It's a "5 minute walk" from Hotel Cairns, but not if you're lugging all your dive gear! We took a cab from the hotel, dropped off our bags, then went to a movie and walked around town until it was time to meet up with the other guests at a local hotel restaurant. We had dinner there, then everyone was walked down the pier to board the Spoilsport. Mike Ball runs a tight ship. There are stringent checkout/check in procedures for every dive. The meals are diverse and well-prepared. Room Ten was close to the dive deck, roomy enough. Storage consisted of 5 drawers and open space under the double bed. This boat has the best dive ladders EVER! With a full complement of divers, the dive deck is extremely overcrowded. Dive briefings were complete, with diagrams for every site. There is the usual schedule: light breakfast, dive, full breakfast, dive, lunch, dive, then usually a dusk/night dive before dinner. Kerran was the dive coordinator. He was very conscientious about dive times and good about communicating in advance when the dive times were going to be, what the dive sites were going to be and any other scheduling things divers needed to know. Everything ran like clockwork. Diving was on Osprey Reef. The Snake Pit had sea sakes the size of eels! There was a shark feed on one dive at the amphitheater at North Wall. The last day of diving, at Steve's Bommie and Flare Point, offered some of the most interesting sea life: cuttlefish, a stonefish, turtles, eels and sharks. Mike Ball offers 7-day, 4-day and 3-day trips, so the '7-dayers' lose morning dives while they offload the '4-dayers' and pick up the '3-dayers' at Lizard Island airport. Because of the new group, the '7-dayers' get to dive Cod Hole twice. There was a hurricane earlier this year, so there was some rubble, but there were still lots of fish and healthy corals. At Goggle Garden, we saw a Solar-Powered Slug, something we had never seen before. Overall, we saw turtles, various sharks, some giant clams, eels, a few ray, a manta, stonefish, cuttlefish. There were plenty of the "usual suspects": batfish, unicorn fish, longnose hawkfish, butterfly fish, coral trout, tangs, blennies, surgeon fish, parrot fish, etc. Photo pro gave reef and ecology talks between dives. There was a photo contest among the photographers on board.
Websites	Mike Ball Spoilsport
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Caribbean, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, Palau, Truk, Fiji, PNG, Red Sea, Tahiti, Bali, Sulawesi, Solomon Islands, Raja Ampat, Philippines, Australia
Closest Airport	Cairns	Getting There	LAX to SYD to CNS
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, dry	Seas	calm
Water Temp	77-79°F / 25-26°C	Wetsuit Thickness
Water Visibility	50-100 Ft/ 15-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	No unusual restrictions; no deco, photo pro not allowed to take your picture if you take your regulator out of your mouth, keep within Nitrox limits.
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	1 or 2
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

Report currently has 2 Helpful votes

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Dive Review of Mike Ball Spoilsport in Australia/Coral Sea

Mike Ball Spoilsport: "Good diving in the Coral Sea", Oct, 2014,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Mike Ball Spoilsport in
Australia/Coral Sea