Great Barrier Reef
We took a big boat (called “Fantasea”) 20km out to the reef. The rockiness wasn’t so bad but the crew was very prepared for sea sicknesses – the seas had been bad for about two weeks and this was the first day that the waves were around 3 feet instead of 9+. They were stationed all around the boat with barf bags… what a job that must be!
The journey out to the reef was soothing – we stayed inside to stay dry from the sometimes driving rain and got out there within an hour. Just as we arrived, the rain stopped! We decided to start our day by taking a glass bottom boat out along the reef. Gavin and I had done a similar trip recently at Disneyland on the Finding Nemo ride. Hahaha – not quite the same as a glass bottom boat at the Great Barrier Reef.
I consider myself extremely lucky to have done a fair share of snorkeling growing up as a Trojan. It’s one of my parents’ favorite things to do in the Caribbean. Even as a tiny tike, my dad would gear us up and plop us in the water and we’d be on our merry way. We’ve been lucky to see a lot of coral in some remote places and sadly, the portion of the Great Barrier Reef that we saw (Hardy Reef) was pretty damaged. The water was very cloudy (was it from the crazy rain and high seas?) and without the bright sun, the coral was dull. I even saw an inexperience swimmer kick and subsequently break off a large chunk of coral. Depending on the type of coral, it can take 1 year for .2 - 1 inch per year to grow back. We think that they block off areas of the Great Barrier Reef for these types of adventures so that they keep the human destruction contained to small areas. I wish they would have blocked off all the areas on top of the coral and instead only permitted people to swim alongside the edge of the coral to keep people from mistakenly breaking off pieces. I’m not sure why they don’t do that. As they day went on and the tide got lower, the reef actually became exposed (you can see it in a few pictures). It was quite remarkable to look out in either direction and see a string of coral as far as the eye can see.
