We have been unlucky in the sense that was high tide so the view was not that impressive since there weren't any corals sticking out in the water...
The Fantasea Pontoon as a permanent inhabitant, George, a groper. And that is a big fish, with about 2m in length.Here is a picture taken from the observation area. It always keeps close since it is fed by the crew with freah fish!
Then we get our teletubbie suits,ehrr...i mean stinger suits and got the snorkeling gears and we were of to the water that was at a confortable 27C!
Here you can see Filipa dangling he fins from the platform with a school of fish passing by
And here am I with my yellow stinger suit!
The underwater view of the reef is amazing. It is what is called a platform reef, and it extendes for over 2300km! It is the only living structure observable from earth's atmosphere and it is home for over 1500 species of species and thousands of coral species. I can't even imagine the diversity of bacteria and other microorganisms that inhabit the reef. Here are some photos that I managed to colro correct using the Filterstorm iPad app and others corrected by my friend PMB.
The last picture is from a knucklehead maori wrasse. And the next one was from a gian clam about 1m in lenght. There aren't two aliek and we must have seen hundreds of them
Spot the Nemo (clown fish) in the next picture
And another giant clam
And again the Knucklehead maori wrasse. It was at least 60 cm in length. In this picture it is being followed by a school of dark parrot fish, and a coral trout
In the next picture you can see a purple brain coral
It is often the smallest things that amaze us most and this was also the case. The school of cuttlefish on the next picture was one of the coolest things we saw at the reef. They had only 3-4 cm in length and swam in a line formation. If we got closer to them they moved to a ball formation and one of them was always coming back to check on us and then moving back. There was at least two different of such scouts. But they were as curious about us, as us about them so they never swam away!
Here is an action shot of the cuttlefish being pursuee by one of their natural predators, the teletubbie Filipa
And in the next two pictures you can see a puffer fish in its natural enviroment. As you can see its camouflage is excelent.
And one last spot the Nemo(s) picture
The variety and colors of the coral was amazing. And the visibility was not great for what ti can be. it was some 15m but with lots of suspention in the water so I couldn't get some clear shots of the surreal coral walls that went from the surface to the bottom
Filipa spoted another turtle swimming away from the reef.
After the snorkle ans a nice barbecue lunch we went for the short semi-submergible boat wit the glass bottom to take a look of the reef in a drier perspective
And there we spoted our first jellyfish in the water since we got here. Filipa managed to get this difficult picture since they are practically transparent in the water and the camera couldn't focus
Just before leaving we still managed to watch another turtle that came out to breathe near the pontoon and took the time to have a little snack on the algies nearby
Finally we went back with lots of good memories, some nice photos and a day to remember! I strongly recomend everyone that can, to take a dive at the Great Barrier Reef ! It is really awesome and the pictures don't do it justice.
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