Tuesday 2 October 2012

Great Barrier Reef

We were fortunate enough to be invited on Kirsten's dad's boat for a week. It's a beautiful timber boat and he actually built it!! We went from Cairns to Opal Reef, St. Crispin Reef and back to Cairns for six days. The weather was FANTASTIC!! I didn't even get seasick and we spent hours snorkeling every day.

Here's the gorgeous looking Pelagos.

Dolphins, turtles, sharks...

... and these ugly creatures: Green humphead parrotfish. They were over 1m long!

The reef was in pretty good condition besides some dead patches from what appeared to be storm damage. Below some shots of the many shapes and colours found on the reef.

 


 








 


This is the only Crown-of-thorns starfish I found during the six days and it was only the size of a small plate.

Clownfish are so hard to photograph!! They dart around and hide as soon as you get too close. And if you're not diving they usually don't come back before you run out of breath.



This nudibranch was only about 50mm long. I was lucky to spot it.



One of the bomboras (usually called bommies) that can be detrimental to a boat. You can't see them until you're almost on top of them!!








1 comment:

  1. Great underwater shots, GBR is in much better condition than the snorkelling we did recently in Thailand.

    Again, you got some great weather, the wet season seems to be a bit delayed this year and Brisbane is very dry still. Also starting to get too hot for our regular 20km hikes in the hinterland, still haven't got to Fraser Island !

    When are you back in Sydney ?

    ReplyDelete