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.
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.
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. More fish from the
afternoon's dive. A video of more reef
fish.
The background music for this video is from Debussy's La Mer (From Dawn
to Noon on the Sea).