The Great Barrier Reef

We had to wait to get our under water camera pictures developed. They came in today, so here are some shots from our snorkeling trip up at the Great Barrier Reef. The Reef is a 350,000 sq km entity made up of around 3000 individual reefs stretching from Cape York to Bundaberg along the Queensland coast. It contains 350 coral species, making it one of the greatest examples of marine biodiversity in the world. It’s been inscribed on the World Heritage List, is the only living thing visible from space and it’s worth about $5.1 billion in annual tourism to the economy.

In the first shot, you can see the end of the moored pontoon from where everyone dives or snorkels. To the right of that is the partially submerged boat where we were able to get commentary on what we were seeing underwater. But nothing compared to what we would see when we put the goggles on and and went exploring.

The pictures just don't do it justice. You have to look closely to see some of what lurks below. This picture of staghorn coral has hundreds of tiny iridescent blue fish swimming through it. (Remember you can click on the picture to make it larger.)

As we were heading back to the pontoon, I saw what looked like a shark about 2 meters long and I began to swim faster! (Turns out it was indeed a white tip reef shark, but pretty harmless.) As we neared the pontoon and the end of our snorkel experience, the tour photographer was underwater taking shots of people near Wally the Wrasse. Wally was huge and gentle and incredible.