Day 8 June 15th 2011

Prompt: Summarize your day at the Great Barrier Reef

Going in today, I did not know what to expect. There are so many cool pictures and talk about the Great Barrier Reef so I had high expectations. I was very antsy on the boat ride out because I couldn't believe I was actually doing this and I just wanted to get into the water. As soon as I saw the reef and all the clear blue water, I was just in awe. I thought it was so cool to see this huge reef in the middle of the ocean just sitting there. The GBR is so popular and talked about a lot so I was so excited to be in the middle of it. I was one of the first ones to get into the reef and I was amazed once I got in. When I got in, I didn't care about the temperature of the water, I only cared about all the fish and coral I saw. As soon as i dove into the water there were some awesome blue fish with yellow tails and they were basically surrounding me. I then explored around in most of the shallow coral and was barely floating above it. On most of the oral beds, it was so shallow that I had to hover my body above the coral so I wouldn't knock into it or get any scrapes. It took a little bit to get used to breathing through the tube but after swimming around for a while I strapped my life jacket on to one of the rest stations and I started diving around and getting closer to the reef. There were a lot of cool rainbow colored fish that live within the coral and there were also these cool fish with basically needles on their foreheads. Once my life jacket was off, I dove to the bottom and touched the sand but it hurt my ears a tremendous amount. Even though it hurt and i got a mouthful of saltwater, it was very cool to be so close to the coral and all the other animals down there. It was such a surreal experience and it is hard to explain the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef. The only bad part about swimming around in the reef was that every once in a while I got a mouthful of saltwater, but I wasn't very worried about that. It was so cool how they had a roped off area for everyone so I knew exactly where to explore. I was hoping to see some sort of shark or turtle but i only saw a turtle when I was on the glass bottom boat tour. Mr. Schagrin and Mr. Ewen saw a shark so after that I wanted to find it so Caleb, Mason, Erik and I went in to find it but we didn't have any luck. After getting out for the final time we had the opportunity to feed the fish which was awesome. Overall, the GBR was quite the experience and is something I'll most likely never do again so I can cross that one off the bucket list.

Fish hidden in the coral

Great Barrier Reef and a Sea Turtle