Great Barrier Reef
Said to be the worlds largest living structure and the only one visible from outer space, the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef is often referred to as the eighth wonder of the world. Stretching over 2000 kilometres and home to tens of thousands of species of brilliantly coloured fish, coral and other marine life including whales, dolphins and turtles. If diving is your passion, then this is your paradise. The Great Barrier Reef is a divers Mecca, and the Whitsunday's has companies catering for every skill level from student to novice to dive master. If snorkelling is more your style, then the warm shallow waters of the Great Barrier Reef, Whitsunday's provide some of the most colourful fish and coral formations anywhere in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The Whitsunday's is recently being recognised as having some of the best fishing in Queensland. Charter Vessels operating out of Shute Harbour, Airlie Beach and Hamilton Island offer a variety of trips to the rich waters of the outer Great Barrier Reef chasing tuna, mackerel and coral trout, or tagging and releasing sailfish and the legendary Black Marlin. The Whitsunday Islands also offers the only opportunity to spend a night in a hotel room right on the Great Barrier Reef! You can get there with ultra fast, ultramodern catamarans, boats, seaplanes and helicopters departing daily from both the islands and the coast, the Whitsunday Region is the ideal hub from which to explore this aquatic wonderland.
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A typical healthy coral reef Photo by Paul Evans |
Beautiful Abundant Reef: |
The largest living structure in the world. The Great Barrier Reef can even be seen from space! Get up close and personal with (harmless) Giant Groupers and other tropical fish of amazing colour intensity. View one on one using the latest in SCUBA equipment or from the relative luxury of glass bottomed boats or semi-submersible specially designed viewing craft. Charter your own sail boat and cruise the Whitsundays. Take a high speed Catamaran out to the reef and snorkel or view by glass bottom boat.. No matter what you want to do on the reef we can arrange it for you!
Dunk Island (above), is one of more than 600 islands of the Great Barrier Reef.
Photo courtesy of poresorts.com.
Why not
visit the
tropical paradise of Fitzroy Island (above)?
Photo by Paul Evans
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The Great Barrier Reef, off Australia's east coast, is one of the wonders of the natural world. It is World Heritage listed and is one of Australia's, and the world's, premier holiday destinations. The combination of glorious weather (be aware that it rains a lot in the wet season!), pristine rainforest, white sandy beaches, and an ocean varying in hue from blue to turquoise to green, ensures it's where the world wants to go to lie on the beach, swim, surf, snorkel, sail, bushwalk and bird watch.
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Scuba Diving: Great Barrier Reef Photo courtesy of Poresorts.com |
More than 1500 species of fish. Photo by Paul Evans |
The area abounds with wildlife, including Dugong and turtles, varieties of dolphins and whales, more than 1500 species of fish, 4000 types of mollusc and more than 200 species of bird life. The Great Barrier Reef system consists of more than 3000 reefs which range in size from 1 hectare to over 10,000 hectares in area. The reef is scattered with beautiful islands and idyllic coral cays and covers more than 300,000 square kilometres.
The coral has, over the years, brought many ships to grief - Cook's own Endeavour hit the reef and almost foundered. One of the most famous wrecks is that of the Pandora, which foundered in 1791. The Queensland Museum has been leading archaeological digs to the Pandora since 1983 and its most recent was completed in February 1999.
The corals which make up the various reefs and cays, and which are the base for this variety of sea and animal life, consist of individual coral polyps - tiny live creatures which join together to form colonies. Each polyp is a tiny jelly-like blob crowned by tentacles, and looks not unlike an anemone, but much smaller. Each polyp lives inside a shell of aragonite, a type of calcium carbonate which is the hard shell we recognise as coral. The polyps join together to create forests of coloured coral in interesting fan, antler, brain and plate shapes.
There are many different types of coral, some are slow growing and live to be hundreds of years old, others are faster growing. The colours of coral are created by algae. Only live coral is coloured. Dead coral is white.
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Healthy Coral Reef Photo courtesy of poresorts.com. |
Blue in the Blue? Photo by Paul Evans |
The ideal environment for coral is shallow warm water where there is a lot of water movement, plenty of light, where the water is salty and low in nutrients.
Reefs are sensitive to climate change, to changes in patterns of water movement, and to physical damage - so problems like global warming, El Niño, the building of moorings or breakwaters, any additional nutrients running off land from human habitation, may well have a negative effect on the reef system, and thus on the sea and land animals which depend upon it for survival.
Tourism may also have a negative impact, with fragile corals broken by reef walking, dropped anchors or by boats dropping fuel and other sorts of pollution. Even the number of people in the water with the associated run-off of sweat and suntan lotions may well have a negative impact on the fragile reef environment.
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Finding a little Nemo perhaps??? Photo by Paul Evans |
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International Air Transport Association (IATA) Number: 02362194 |
