Today we left Cairns for the first half of our expedition of the Great Barrier Reef. With both of us being Pieces, we love sea life and snorkeling, so the Reef has been very high on the Bucket List since the beginning. Now here we are!!!!!!

The Great Barrier Reef is rather a misnomer. Jacob, our marine biologist, says that a more appropriate name would be the Great Barrier Reef System because it is made up of thousands of individual reefs which cover an area equivalent to the distance from New York to Florida. That’s a lot of reef which is a good thing because nearly 75% of our oxygen comes from coral reefs and algae beds.

Anyway, we left Trinity Peer and sailed to Thetford Reef where we went SNORKELING ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF/System for the very first time!!!!! The water was warm and the views beautiful and I took about a million pictures. These are just a few.

We spent the next day at Pelorus Island and Tom and I took an “explorer scuba lesson” and went for a half hour dive – very, very exciting!

In the afternoon Jacob,  our marine biologist, set up a “touch tank” with creatures he’d collected from the reef. Here we are some of them.

 

 

The next day we bobbed around one reef and another ending up on Dunk Island for more snorkeling.

Jacob, explained the cleaner wrasse as the carwash guy. Other fish come to him to have bacteria and parasites cleaned from their scales and gills. The larger fish gets a “good cleaning” and the cleaner fish gets dinner.

Then we headed up the incredibly scenic and lush Hinchinbrook Channel which separates mainland Australia from a myriad of small islands off the coast. The channel is lined with miles of rich mangroves and its inhabitants include crocodiles, dolphins, turtles, dugongs, giant clams and soooo much more. The twisted roots and trunks of the mangrove provide shelter and a “nursery” for plethora of baby fish and turtles. Unfortunately we only got a glimpse of a dolphin but the scenery was tranquil and lovely.

Tom and I spent about an hour or so on the bridge with the captain. Captain Gary is very young, handsome, charming and friendly. He’s also Irish and talks with a lilting brogue. He chatted with Tom about the charts, technology, etc. and I took in the scenery. (I did get to drive the boat a couple days later for about two minutes. I backed it up about 10 meters to the right position for our next snorkel.

The next day we anchored off the Sudbury Reef. After a glass bottom boat ride, we snorkeled off the back of the boat. It was a sunny day – the first we’d had – and the snorkeling was fantastic. We saw profusion of fish, coral, giant clams, anemone, crabs, sea stars, sea cucumbers – beyond awesome!!!

Then back to Cairns to drop off our passenger friends who were disembarking and to pick up another group to continue on the northern loop of our cruise.