Great Barrier Reef: Day 2

Photo-bomb on the GBR. It was fun to swim upside down.

Snorkeling on the reef today. I was able to dive to about 5m.

Today, we did ... the same thing we did yesterday, except we went to three different sites!  We snorkeled/SCUBAed at the Great Barrier Reef.  We again saw a rainbow of flamboyant, radiant, and fluorescent, as well as drab-colored, gill-using aquatic craniates that furtively hid behind the kaleidoscope of differently-colored coral as we dramatically made our approach ... and then there was the sea cucumber. (Went a little nuts with the thesaurus again.)  Did you know that the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living thing visible from outer space?

There are about 10 species of coral in this photo.

One of the most intriguing fish I saw were Blue Green Chromis.  They were, at first, radiantly blue and schooling around stag-horn coral.  When I approached them and waved my hand (like the dive master suggested), they turned bright green!  About 10 seconds later, when they calmed down, they turned back to blue.  That was really cool, especially for a fish the size of your thumb.

A few other neat things we saw were Cristmas-Tree Worms, and Giant Clams.  The "worms" were blue, and looked like a Christmas Tree, hence the name.  (Not very worm-like at all, really.)  When you waved your hand at one, it would suck its little tentacles back into the coral where it was growing.  It was something I have never seen before, but it reminded me of the movie Avatar, which also featured disappearing, spiral plants of some sort.

My dad said I looked like a Smurf in my stinger suit.

We also saw giant clams.  Some were even the size of a car tire!  One of the clams was dead, lying in a patch of sand and it was open all the way. It didn't look like there was much going on inside of it, but it reminded my mom of two enormous Ruffles Potato chips.  Guess what?  When you wave your hand by a live giant clam, it sucks in its "lips".  These fleshy parts of the clam had bright blue dots and looked really cool.  Who knew a clam could be so interesting?

Scissor-tail sergeants schooling near the reef.

The whole reef is alive when you look down. Amazing!