Today we had a whole day on the Great Barrier Reef and what a day it was. We were collected from our hotel at 7:50 and taken round to the marina where our boat for the day was waiting. I was a little worried as although we had booked onto the smallest trip available there were still about 50 people on board but I shouldn’t have been concerned as it didn’t feel that busy at all once we were in the water. It was a well oiled machine as you got on the boat, first you deposited your shoes, then you were given a wetsuit – only a 3/4 length one this time. Then it was upstairs to collect goggles and flippers, much to my surprise they actually had prescription lenses if you wanted for the goggles which of course we took then finally we were issued with flippers. We found a seat on the upper deck in the dry right by the pilot and settled in for the 1.5 hour ride out to the reef. The boat is totally manned by marine biologists so we had a few talks on the way out about what we could expect to sea and how to get the most out of our day. Unfortunately this was held downstairs right near the engines so I found it a bit difficult and decided to go back to our seat, as I came back up Mike our captain said I could talk to him if I wanted and he would give me a brief overview of what to expect which was probably better than sitting down with everyone else as we had a great talk about the fish we should see and also what to do if we encountered turtles – don’t sneak up on them make sure you swim alongside them and don’t make eye contact for too long as the whites of our eyes make them think we are a predator. We also talked about sharks, although we are only going to see small sharks apparently one of the most important senses the sharks have is the ability to detect electromagnetic currents and this allows them to create an x-ray picture of things they encounter. They tend to stay away from humans that are swimming because we have a lot of bone but also we have four tentacles, that have many tentacles coming off them so this is confusing for the sharks and they tend to just swim away. He did mention the few shark attacks there have been and these are mostly because people are on surfboards, apparently when we are on a surf board we look just like an injured seal and as that is predominantly what they eat they take a bite and although they normally decide they don’t like the taste of us as we don’t taste like seal they tend to bite at the top of the leg where the arteries are and people tend to bleed out before they can get help. However on the positive the sharks we are going to see today – if we see them – are all only going to be small ones and they will probably run away if they see us but again the advice was that we shouldn’t swim towards them as that is predatory behaviour but again swim alongside them and they may not run away! By the time we had finished talking we were almost at our first site which was Rayban on Opal reef, according to Mike (the captain) this is the reef that has been most damaged by global warming. We put on our wetsuits then after a briefing on how to call for help and what to do it was time to get in the water which was actually a lot warmer than I expected. The coral looked amazing and we saw loads of fish, its difficult to describe everything we saw as it was all so impressive but I think the main thing to say is that when the ships horn went off to say we had been in the water for an hour we were really surprised and didn’t want to leave but we had to swim back to the boat and move onto the next site which was Sandbox still on Opal reef but quite different as this one was quite shallow and had quite steep walls which is where we spent most of our time as we felt this is where you see the best coral and also the most fish! We spent another hour in the water here which again went far too quickly then it was time for lunch which was a nice selection of pastries with various vegetables in them all of which were very nice. After lunch we had another talk, this time about the state of the reef and the causes of the damage, apparently every 16 years there is a temperature rise of between 3 – 6 degrees which causes bleaching on the coral and is a form of natural selection, much like Forrest fires kill of a number of plants which allow various plants and trees to re-grow this is a natural phenomenon and has been going on as long as the reef has been in place. Interestingly the brightly coloured coral is actually in a bad way and is defending itself against the plants that naturally live on it, this is normally a sign of the coral dying off and actually shouldn’t be the image everyone has. Coral take their colour from the plankton they eat and therefore are naturally cream, brown or beige in colour, the blue, red and orange are actually them secreting antitoxins to try and protect themselves, this normally isn’t successful and therefore they tend to die off just after this. The issue with global warming is that these temperature rises are happening more often, there have been about 5 in the last 16 years rather than just one and the big issue is that the temperature rose in both 2016 and 2017 which caused 35 percent of the reef to die. It was interesting that as marine biologists they just present the facts, they don’t really push what could / should change just what is happening and what the cause is. After all this it was time for our final dive on Mojo reef the final area of Opal reef we were visiting and it was definitely a case of leaving the best to last as this was where there were a number of coral gardens both of colour and not and amazing to swim round. Finally we were called back to the boat and we had to come back to the apartment after one of the best days of the holiday so far.
