Great Barrier Reef, Australia

We were able to take a day trip snorkeling on the great barrier reef off Cape Tribulation.
Our boat was the Odyssey H2O.
We along with our hardy companions felt fortunate to get out to the reef since storms the previous several days had prevented any tours.

Looking back at the coast as we set out.

The Great Barrier Reef extends for thousands of miles.
From the surface much of the reef looks like light and dark patches with occasional sandy islands separated by myriad small channels.
Even though it isn't a single continuous reef one can see the difficulty of maneuvering a sailing ship out through them.
That difficulty led the explorer Captain Cook to chose the name Cape Tribulation for the point of land near here.

Nancy, getting ready for her first look at the reef.

Coral

A video tour of the reef.

Reef Tour
Soft coral was fairly common.

A video of soft coral showing how it moves as the waves surge over the reef.

Soft Coral
Giant clams Tridacna gigas sporting their colors.
These were between one and two feet across.
The color is from symbiotic algae that live in their mantle.
The dots are their eyes, better called photoreceptors since they don't have any apparent imaging capability.

Here's a video of a clam. They don't do much.

Giant Clam
Fish of every color.
The water was a little cloudy from the storms so some of the colors in the pictures aren't as bright as what we actually saw
I couldn't always take a picture when it was near the surface and I was close.

Clouds of blue fish an inch or so long were a very common sight.

Little blue fish taking cover in the coral.

Blue Fish in Coral
We were ready for a tasty lunch when it was served.

Back in the water we saw these strange fish.
The water was less than 25 feet deep so I had no trouble following the scuba divers to the bottom.
Of course their stay time at depth was longer than us snorkelers.
But because of the cloudy water near the bottom from the storm they didn't get as good views as we did nearer the surface.