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A clown fish. These were amazing! They swim right next to your face and have gorgous colouring.It's hard to find the words to describe the Great Barrier Reef. To say it is a natural wonder of the world just doesn't seem enough. So you will have to bear in mind that as I am writing this every adjective I use to describe it feels like an understatement.
It is the largest living thing on earth, can be see from outer space, and home to: more than 1,500 species of fish, as well as dolphins, stingray, jelly fish, sea snakes, molluscs and more. Many of them are endangered. Also several species of sea turtles come to the reef to breed.
The conflicting thing about going to see it, even though nothing would have stopped me, was that I was absolutely terrified. My biggest fear is open water, specifically being abandoned in it. It's quite irrational really, like most phobias, because I am quite happy to scuba dive. It's the idea of dangling on the surface of deep ocean without being fully emerged and able to see what it is that will potentially eat me scares me.(as if seeing makes any difference in that situation!)
A lot.
Part of it is due to the fact that I'm completely fasinated
with the ocean and I know it's not a forgiving place. When you're in it as a creature of the land you have to fully respect it and even then it is completely unpredictable. I don't personally think it's unwise to be scared of the sea, considering the many ways that it can do you harm. There's a story in the book I was reading about someone who was stung by the Box Jellyfish (native to Australia), the screams he came out with were reportedly blood curdling. The worse thing is that even after he was sedated he was still screaming. The pain is supposed to be unimaginable so I think it's quite normal to not want to spend the rest of your life in considerable pain or get eaten, no?!
Anyway, this is the thing, as soon as I got within a few meters of the boat and had my mask in the water, even after my friends had told me they'd seen a shark, all of that fear was replaced completely with awe.
It is just one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. So varied and beautiful. The fish swim around you as if you don't
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Nemo and his massive. exist and you can dive down and get us close as you want.
We were taken to two different parts of the reef and given an allotted amount of time for each. Both times, everyone else went in when they felt they had seen enough and Laura and I were out there on our own until the very end.
It's such a shame that we couldn't do the scuba diving but we are waiting for Thailand to get our PADIs and couldn't afford to do both.
The most amazing part of the day was seeing two green sea turtles which you can see from the pictures courtesy of Laura's underwater camera.
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