Great Barrier Reef - Going Under

Some of the corals really glowed; most were not so colorful as this, though they came in fantastic shapes and sizes.

Big schools of these guys; species?

Butteflyfish pair

These are beginning divers hanging onto a line while they get used to breathing naturally underwater I guess.

Lots of small fishes on the reef.

The giant clams were truly phenomenal, and they had glowing green fluorescent dots on their lips!

A wrasse of some kind?

Like birds, many of these reef fish pair up; they really seem to have personalities too.

This is a small parrotfish

These small blue fish were everywhere in darting schools. I saw one get eaten by a very fast triggerfish.

Here I am exploring the reef.

These small stripy fish were everywhere too (Sergeant majors?)

Here's a large fish I saw frequently...

The first site we stopped at had a swift current going by the reef, so there would have been problems with beginning divers (or so we were told) so we moved to a calmer spot on Opal Reef one of the thousands of reeflets that are part of the GBR preserve. I was eager to plunge in but we had to wait for the divers to get their acts together - for those reading this, you may want to consider a snorkel only boat if you want a little more time in the water. We had originally signed up for one, called Wavelength, but they had to re-fit their propeller so we moved to this outfit, which sounded good on the web (and by and large, they were).

Anyway, plunging underwater, we were not disappointed by the wonderful displays of coral and fish. Now, when you've snorkeled before in places like Hawaii, Egypt, the Caribbean, etc. I think you get distorted memories over time...at least I think I do. I remember a place we call 'the aquarium' in Maui is just off the charts spectabulous in every way. But truth be told, I suspect the fish diversity was higher here on the GBR and the corals were most certainly more spectacular. But even after snorkeling here on the GBR, I have a tremendous fondness for the aquarium on Maui and would go back there in an instant.

So technology is amazing isn't it? Here are pictures taken with an $87, 8 Megapixel waterproof camera (Vivitar 8400). I'll let you be the judge about how they came out. I took about 150 pictures in the course of 2 snorkeling bouts, and these are definitely a culling from that, but some of them I hope give you the flavor of the day. Suffice it to say, I was wishing for more days on the reef...enough time to start learning the new fish, etc. So I felt like I just got a taste.