The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef contains the largest collection of coral in the world and is an obvious site of natural beauty. The Reef is also home to 1500 different kinds of fish and 4000 different types of mollusc that live amongst its 400 types of coral. The dugong and green turtle can also be found at the Great Barrier Reef, but are threatened by extinction.

We paid through a cruise trip to go snorkeling at the Reef. We chose a smaller boat and company as to try and avoid too many crowds. It worked as there were no other cruise company's around us when we reached our snorkeling area.

The company supplied our snorkels and wet suits, although wet suits were not needed as the sea was so warm. I had an underwater camera, but the pictures weren't great as the water was quite cloudy. I did manage to see plenty of coral and fish though. Some quite big fish accumulated around the bottom of the boat, so we snorkeled around there for a while.

We were told about the reef sharks, but not to be alarmed by them as they have no teeth! We swam around for ages, but were aware not to swim too far from the boat as the captain had placed some rules before we were allowed into the water.

When we returned to the boat, the captain had his binoculars, staring out into the ocean and then double checked everyone was aboard. I asked him if everything was all right and he said that he thought he had seen a large fin! Our captain thought he had spotted a shark not far from the boat! It turned out to be a very large sea bird on closer inspection! I was quite disappointed as I would have loved to have seen a shark (from the boat though!!).