Cairns Day 2 - Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef

The day started off at the hotel breakfast with an Aussie treat I'd spotted at the grocery store the day before.  Vegemite!  It is a very popular spread that the Aussies apparently enjoy.  Well, I'm here to report, it was gross.  Where is the Nutella mates?  Now that is a spread I can support.

After breakfast I walked to the pier to board the boat for my snorkel tour.  Our first stop was Michaelmas Cay.

Michaelmas Cay is I guess what you'd call a small narrow sandbar some 22 nautical miles into the ocean from Cairns.  You can't really see, but the cay was covered with all sorts of different birds.  We got off our boat and onto a little raft to head over to the cay.  I was all suited up and ready to snorkel!

I will say, this was probably my first Enzo mini freak-out moment of the trip.  I'd snorkeled once before in the Caribbean and I had a similar freak-out.  Basically, not being able to breathe through my nose and then breathing through my mouth through a snorkel tube took me a minute to get comfortable with.  I realize this is beyond silly and yes I got over it.  There were like 8 year olds and 80 year olds having little to no problem with it.  What can I say, I'm special.  After I got comfortable with the snorkel gear there really were some amazing sights to be behold.  In the entire group there were about 30 of us and we broke into two groups for a guided snorkel tour.  Then we had some time to snorkel on our own.  I didn't bring an underwater camera, but our guide did, and took pictures for us throughout the tour and then posted them to Facebook which I thought was nice.

The second stop was Hastings Reef which was about 30 nautical miles into the ocean so a bit farther out.  This was my favorite of the two locations.  There were literally moments where we were surrounded by schools of fish large and small and coral just beneath our flippers.  It was like Finding Nemo down there.  The first photo below is one I took from the boat and you can see the water is a different color in spots which is where there is coral reef just below the surface.  After that are some more underwater photos our guide took for us.

After the second snorkel we took a glass bottom boat tour where we saw some more fish, turtles and coral.

There I am on the left!

The guide driving the boat talked to us a lot about coral bleaching that is clearly caused by rising sea temperatures.  He also had a bone to pick with the media that bleached coral isn't dead coral its simply coral that, as he put it, "has a fever."  Its not dead yet, it just loses it's color because the algae is distressed and separates from the coral.  As he explained algae and the coral have a symbiotic relationship and the algae provides the coral with 90 percent of the nutrients it needs to survive.  When sea temperatures rise, the algae becomes distressed and expels much more carbon dioxide which is toxic to the coral.  So the coral has two choices, consume the poison being put out by the algae, or "starve."  The coral chooses to starve and thus loses much of its color.  However, the coral isn't dead. If sea temperatures cool, the algae will expel less carbon dioxide and can reunite with the coral and it can become healthy again.  Extended periods of rising sea temperatures would however put the coral at significant risk.  He also shared that they do see more and more coral bleaching each and every year and that the figure noting that 25% of coral in the great barrier reef is bleached is accurate.  He noted in particular that 2015 was the worst year they'd ever seen and then 2016 took it's place.  They are still waiting to see how 2017 ends up but he noted that sea temperatures have consistently been above average and the Aussie summer is just around the corner.

After the glass bottom boat tour we headed back to Cairns.  There was some more great scenery to take in enroute.

All in all it was a great ride and tour.  It really is amazing all that there is to see just under the surface and how massive and diverse of an ecosystem the Great Barrier Reef is.