Fish on the Great Barrier Reef
Today was the highlight of our trip so far. We spent the day snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef outside of Port Douglas. The weather was warm, the sea was quite calm, and the coral and tropical fish displays were spectacular.
We chose to go snorkeling with Wavelength, as they only do snorkel tours. They have a maximum of 30 on the boat (today there were 22 of us) and go to three different sites on the outer reef. It is about a 1.5 hour trip from Port Douglas to the first site – a little longer today as we stopped twice to fish garbage out of the ocean – once a large plastic water bottle, and the second time a soccer ball. The ball was a lot harder for the crew to pick up, but the guide managed to snag it with his feet while hanging onto the rail with his arms.
Corals of the Great Barrier Reef
Each of the three sites was slightly different. At the first there were both turtles and white-tipped reef sharks, but neither Enid nor I saw them. We had gone off in a slightly different direction than the bulk of the group and saw a lot of nice coral and fish. By the time we got back to the main group the turtle was not visible. At the second site there was a lot of coral spawn in the water. It looked a lot like pink algae. At this site the marine biologist pointed out a number of the different kinds of coral. The final site, after dinner, was probably the best in terms of varieties of coral and fish, but by this time it was slightly windy, so there were small swells. This made it harder to keep the fish in view, but overall it was excellent snorkelling, and we both had a great time. However, we’re also both pretty tired tonight, since we were in the water swimming for over three hours today.