We boarded our boat along with about 35 other people who were also snorkelling or scuba diving and had a 2 and a half hour drive out to the Outer Barrier Reef. The Reef is made up of around 20 mini reefs, almost like coral islands submerged under water. Some of the reefs were surrounded by huge drop offs of about 20-30 metres down to the sea floor- a pretty daunting sight when you swim over to it and you're surrounded by deep blue water, almost expecting an eerie shadow of a great white to be looming in the distance...
But thankfully we didn't get attacked by any sharks! However we did see a small white tip reef shark, about 1.5 metres long and swam right underneath us!!
I've posted all the photos below; the picture quality doesn't do the reef any justice at all! The reef was bursting with marine life; fish chasing eachother, diving into crevices and feeding off the coral. We saw so many different types of fish but it was hard to capture photos of then as the reef floor was about 10 metres down and the flippers we were wearing made it hard to dive down, but I still got a few good snaps!
We saw some giant clams on the sea floor
And nemo hiding in his little white anemone house!
There was so many things to take pictures of!
There were HUGE drop offs to deep ocean, I managed to capture a few...
And the rest of my photos are just of the colourful coral or the many fish that we saw!
We also saw a jellyfish! I was swimming next to it, about 10cm away and I didn't even know! Courtney had to shout me and warn me to swim away! It was so scary!
We dived in 2 locations, had lunch and cheese and biscuits and sailed back to the mainland. Unfortunately Courtney got sunburn on the backs of her legs where the wetsuit didn't cover, even though she put loads of sun cream on, the sun is extremely strong here.
Now we are in Townsville, we are about to get on a bus to Airlie Beach, we have been here for 2 days... Yesterday we went over to magnetic island on the ferry, had lunch and walked along the heavenly beach which was totally deserted; absolute paradise! Along the beach there were trees full of tropical birds sqwuaking and flying around!
Unfortunately when we got back to the mainland, Courtney realised she had lost her iPhone 5... She had left it on the island somewhere. After much panic and a lot of stress, this morning we received a phone call and they had found it on one of the buses we got on the island and now we are waiting for it to be ferried back over! The ferry gets here at 2.10 and we have to get on our bus to Airlie at 2.15! Hopefully we will make it!!
I drew Courtney and a pirate too^ lol
We also met a cute pug! (Again!) Mr Sniffles!
And 2 days ago I saw a green tree frog and we both had a mega mac from mcdonalds!!!!! 4 burgers on one bun!!!
Only you could get a Pug into a blog about the GBR! Looks fantastic. And what about the peeps of Aus being so honest and handing Cukes phone in? Great result. Liked the pic of Cuke as a pirate so much I had to include in my blog as well!
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