The Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, Australia – May 4th

We missed our call on Cooktown on the Cape York Peninsula, the spike of Australia that juts up into the Pacific on the right hand side, because high winds prevented tendering.  Captain James Cook landed there in 1770, the first European to find the east coast of Australia, as well as to circumnavigate New Zealand, and to “discover” Hawaii. But with a population of 2,300, missing Cooktown was no big deal. On to the Great Barrier Reef!

We took a catamaran shuttle out to a floating pontoon anchored over the Great Barrier Reef. You could snorkel, SCUBA, take glass bottom boat rides, take a helicopter tour, or ride a semi-submersible. I went diving while Joani went snorkeling and took the glass-bottom boat ride.

We saw the same stuff but I had the camera

The star of the show was Wally the Wrasse, the head fish honcho in these parts:

I got some good photos and a good video. Wally checks out the tourists as much as they check him out:

Also saw the best giant clams we’ve seen yet. They call these “man-eaters” – look just like the ones that clamped on divers’ feet in the Saturday morning cartoons when we were kids:

The purple coral near the left base of the clam was cool. We also saw blue coral:

And more interesting corals:

And black & white fish that played hide & seek like clown fish always do:

And as always we saw some really cool other fish:

 Semicircle angelfish

Female wrasse 

Map puffer 

The reef was truly spectacular today. The water was clearer and the corals and fish more colorful than when we came in 2007. The excursion was really well run. So Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, gets and “A+” from us.

Tomorrow: Townsville Australia and the Great Barrier Reef HQ Aquarium. Below, a few more great corals: