Sunday 19 April 2009

Great Barrier Reef

In our quest to find Nemo, we booked onto a boat tour to the outer Great Barrier Reef. At 2,000km long, the Great Barrier reef is the biggest structure in the world made by living organisms. (It looked really impressive from the air as we flew to Sydney yesterday – the individual reefs looked like jewels in the sea).



Kitted out in flattering full-body lycra suits to protect against 'stingers' (i.e. jellyfish), we dived into the clear blue water. The water was 27 degrees with excellent visibility. We were looking forward to exploring three sites in the Agincourt reef group.



The snorkelling was phenomenal with beautiful coral formations, large shoals of colourful tropical fish, and even a couple of reef sharks. The hardest thing was trying not to get kicked in the face by other people (mainly kids and their parents) who didn't look where they were going.



At the second site, there was a massive coral wall of about 15 metres. It was full of little caves and overhangs, and we had a great time finding fish and starfish hiding in them. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't see any Nemos around. But we did see at least 50 different species of fish instead. At the third site, an enormous wrasse fish was swimming around us. We both dived down to touch it. One of the other people even gave it a long wet kiss on the mouth. That was a bit too weird...



1 comments:

auntie Liz said...

Hello Andy and Jen

The Great Barrier Reef looks beautiful, so clear as well. It sounds as if there were a few people down there too......
Love auntie Liz x