The Great Barrier Reef

We recently took a boat tour to the Great Barrier Reef.  

We took a trip from Port Douglas on the boat Wavelength IV to the outer reef one calm day. 

One of my lifelong dreams has been to see The Great Barrier Reef and now I’ve seen part of it!

However having only seen a tiny minuscule part of this amazing wonder has me already planning on going back in the future. 

As I said we went on a calm day. 

When we originally planned to go the wind was quite strong and our cousin hearing of our plans suggested, if we had the time waiting as the wind was staying strong from that quarter for another week. 

Which would make it a choppy trip to the reef and cause the water to be somewhat murky. 

I’m really glad he told us to wait, the Captain of the vessel said that the day we went on was one of only three calm days that week. 

All the crew of the vessel were great and happy to answer questions and give us an idea of what we would likely see at each sight.

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the first site. 

Our first site was Turtle Bay on the Tongue Reef. 

After telling us to keep a sharp eye out for turtles and white tip sharks we were in the water. 

The water was a perfect temperature for swimming and floating on the top of the water. 

I was amazed at just how much life there was from our very first look. 

We found some of Nemo’s cousins in an anemone. 

Snorkeling there was a feast for the eyes! 

I mostly floated along the surface just looking at everything while Magpie loved diving down to get a closer look at what was there.

We had an underwater camera that we switched off and took photos with. 

Fish swam lazily everywhere I looked and multiple shapes and sizes of coral everywhere.

The Great Barrier Reef is amazing!

Snorkeling is awesome!

Everything about our trip was spectacular!

As you can see from the many, many photos we took.

Of which I have only included a small portion in this blog post.

After swimming first one way from the boat for awhile

we switched direction towards an area that the crew had indicated was a good place for turtles.

Taking many photos along the way

Not wanting to miss anything below 

or around us.

We had only been in that area a little while before Magpie was tapping on my arm pointing to a turtle swimming away from us.

 We gave chase but the little fella was fast. Even with flippers on we couldn’t overtake him. 

 I was surprised by how much his shell helped him blend in with the coral below him.

The light shinning through the water came down on his shell in a spottled way which further broke up his already patterned shell until it was hard to make him out from the ever changing background of sand and coral.

 I tried to take photos of him but unfortunately I never got close enough to take a clear picture. 

The one time I thought I was close enough Magpie's knee blocked my shot. 

After an all too short hour of swimming the boat sounded a horn for the recall and we were fed morning tea whilst we travelled only a short way to our next snorkelling site, the Southside of Opal Reef.

Here an interesting feature of the site was the large bombie close to the surface.

The underwater column/mountain was covered with coral down to the bottom where it reached the sand about fifteen metres down.

The ledges of coral and sea life were great to see.

The fish were often larger here was we were close to deeper water.

There were also large schools of fish some of them quite small that you could only really see as the sunlight sparked of their scales and some quite large such as the school of red bass that looked silver.

Magpie and I took the crew up on an offer of a guided tour where we learnt some interesting facts about the creatures that made up the ecosystem of the reef. 

They showed us the different types of coral such as the plates, boulders, and branches.

We got to touch as piece of coral that was although looking smooth really quite sharp. 

  We looked at giant clams.

 

 Finishing the tour off with a close look at a sea cucumber, the vacuum cleaner of the reefs that keeps the sand such a lovely fine white.

I’m glad we joined in the tour but I enjoyed snorkeling after whatever caught my attention without keeping up with a group more.

However after about twenty minutes the tour ended and everyone split off and started to explore the scene in ones and twos.

Magpie and I got separated somehow and I spent the rest of the hour at that site by myself slowly making my way around the bombie.

Unfortunately the time was up before I'd gone further then three quarters of the way around.

It was lunch then, before we were at the third and last site of the day, on the Main bit of Opal Reef.

The crew told us that this part of the reef was heavily damaged in a cyclone in 2017 however it had really built itself up and although parts of the reef were still damaged, dead coral staying a bleached white, the majority of it was thriving.

Magpie and I agreed that this last site was our favourite!

The vibrant colours were amazing and probably because of the cyclone taking off the top of the reef we could swim all over the top plateau as it was deep enough our legs wouldn’t touch but shallow enough we could see everything clearly. 

The fish here were the most numerous and diverse with small little ones swimming next to large fish. 

There were multicoloured fish standing out from the coral and others that blended in, fish hiding behind and beneath small pockets in amongst the coral. 

There were colourful parrot fish biting at the coral.

Large clams hidden in among the coral.

It wasn't just the fish that were interesting either.

The coral itself was multiple sizes and shapes, colours and depths, everywhere I looked there was something else for my eyes to catch on or something fascinating to dive down to see closer.

I became much more confident here diving down to examine anything that caught my interest rather than staying on the surface.

My ears hurt a little at the end but not too much as previously the crew had taught us how to equalize our ears before going deeper.

                  Unfortunately our camera which had taken such great shots at the previous sites died only a few minutes into the hour with the battery running out of power.   Once again the horn sounded for the return to the boat all too soon. We were fed afternoon tea while the boat headed for home. Magpie said that she felt they just kept feeding us, which I was glad of as swimming always makes me hungry. One of the crew members had spent the day taking photos of everything, which were sent to everyone free of charge at the end of the day. Magpie and I had made a point of getting a photo taken in the water so we had one of us together. We loved the whole day! I’m so glad we went and can’t wait to go again sometime.

All the photos below are ones taken by the crew who had a much better camera then ours.