Our Adventures in the Underwater World

6:30 AM: BEEP BEEP BEEP! Time to get up to go to the reef!

Yay! We were going to another Natural Wonder of the World! The Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, Australia.

The boat was a close walk away from our apartment and the walk along the Esplanade was stunning… We just had to watch out for the crocodiles!

The boat we were going in was called the “Down Under”…  I hope that is not where the boat was going today!

When we went on board, we tried on flippers and got our snorkels and masks. Luckily for Mikhaila, she was able to get prescription goggles so that she could see clearly underwater. We entered a huge room full of tables and chairs to get our instructions.

We moved to the front of the boat and took our seats. The boat started moving. At first it was a little bit shaky and then it was practically flying!  It was crazy! While the boat was moving, one of the crew members explained that the front of the boat is the worst place to be if you get motion sickness (by the way, I get motion sickness). So guess what I did… I moved to the back of the boat outside to get some fresh air. There were many people out there so I just looked forward the whole time until…. the boat stopped. Then I heard someone say “Congratulations! We’re here!

Since I still was not feeling too good I went up to the top deck where I found my mom struggling to put on her wetsuit. It was so funny! But once she got it on… It was my turn! It was so hard that my mom and dad had to lift up me with the wetsuit to get it on!

Finally we were all in our wetsuits and ready to go. In the beginning, when we first got into the water, we were kicking each other by accident, but then we got the hang of it and I looked at the Great Barrier Reef for the first time.  I was amazed! The coral was huge and beautiful. We swam around in partners at first, (mom with Mikhaila and dad with Zoe) and I saw a small stingray; it was awesome. Then all four of us held hands and swam together because the waves were massive and pushing us all over the place.

Wow! The fish were so colourful; especially the blue parrot fish. They were bright blue and their colours really made them stand out. Parrot fish look like parrots because their fins go up and down like wings, they are brightly coloured and they have a beaks! They scrape off and eat the algae on the coral.  Parrot fish make a lot of noise doing this and leave big scratches on the coral.

A parrot fish

Wow! Beautiful

Scratches from the parrot fish

Nice!

While snorkleing, we saw so many different types of coral such as Staghorn, Needle, Lunar, Honeycomb, Brain, Cabbage, Plate, Vase, Mushroom and Knobby.

If you are wondering how we took the photos, we used a Go Pro.

Close up of the coral!

There are so many different kinds of coral in this photo! 🙂

Beautiful!

Awesome!

We think this is Lettuce and Plate coral

We think this is Staghorn coral

Gorgeous

All different kinds of coral

We think this is Plate and Needle coral

Coral shaped like a dolphin tail

We think the one on the left is Finger coral

Bubbles and coral

Finger coral

We think this is Lettuce and Finger coral

Marvelous

We also saw many fish such as Parrot fish, Surgeonfish, Angelfish, Damselfish and Cleaner wrasse.  Cleaner wrasse are really important in the reef because they clean the dead skin off of other fish.  They are little silver fish with a black stripe going down their body.

This is not my video, but we saw this in action:

Two Parrot fish

A big school of little fish

We think this is a big Parrot fish

Fish and coral

A really big fish

A big group

A striped fish

We saw so many, it is hard to name them all!

We got back on the boat and went to the second snorkel destination.  This time we had the chance to explore a coral wall.  We saw everything that we saw before, plus two bonuses: a beautiful giant clam…..

and a white tipped reef shark! AHHH! It swam right under us which was awesome and a little bit scary.  Although in this photo it looks small, it was actually about 1.5 meters long.

Here is a little movie that shows what we saw:

Thank goodness we went to Reef Teach, we had a good idea of what we were looking at!  🙂

The ride back to shore was a lot smoother than the ride in.  On the way back, we talked and shared our experiences with other people on the boat while a member of the crew sang and played the guitar.

This awesome experience reminded me of three things:

1. Phillip Island– On Phillip Island, we saw penguins living in their natural habitat. The Great Barrier Reef reminded me of this because both the penguins and the fish are living in their natural habitat.

2. It also reminded me of the game drives we did in Tanzania for the same reason I mentioned above.

3. The fish and the stingray that we saw reminded me of Stingray Bay at the Toronto Zoo, and Ripley’s Aquarium in downtown Toronto.

We have now seen 4 Man Made Wonders of the World (The Colosseum, Petra, The Taj Mahal, and The Great Wall of China)  and two Natural Wonders of the World (Ha Long Bay and now the Great Barrier Reef) I am glad that is was chosen as a Wonder and I think that it deserves that name! 🙂

I am only 11 years old, and I understand how lucky I am to be able to see all of these amazing things in person.  I have seen how beautiful and important natural habitats are for our world’s creatures and have learned even more that it’s our job to keep it clean and safe for the animals living there.  We can do this by reducing our footprint and doing things to help clean up our past mistakes.  Who else is with me?