The Great Barrier Reef by Sarah

This is a picture of me before we went to Fitzroy Island!!!

On the 15th of December, my family and I went to the Great Barrier Reef with Sunlovers Cruises.  The Sunlovers Cruise provided snorkel equipment but it was really bad.  But, I learned and saw lots of fish and coral anyway.  Some coral looked like grass and some looked like brains. The animals and coral were amazing. 

Jellyfish at the Great Barrier Reef.

The snorkels that Sunlovers Cruises provided for us were really bad.  The other snorkelers on our tour wore lifejackets, even the grownups did!  There was an old man who got all the gear and couldn’t even swim so he asked his son to swim with him! It was really funny!  The water was a bit choppy so water kept getting in my snorkel. I couldn’t clear the snorkel properly without taking the mouthpiece off because the self-clearing spout was missing a cover piece.  The goggles that I got leaked a lot.   I ended up not using the snorkel and just use the mask and fins. 

This is a shark with fish.

At the Great Barrier Reef, the animals I say were fishes, sea cucumbers, clams, and coral. They had lots of fishes and they were all different colors, sizes and shapes. The sea cucumbers were in a tub and they were still alive.  They breathed by getting water in through their mouth, taking air out of it, and squirting it out their backside! It was funny because it looked like they were peeing.  The clams that we saw were huge! One of them could fit me inside of it. The clams were really colorful and pretty inside, too.  If you closed them up and saw them, they would look like a rock on the outside. I think that is to camouflage with the rocks.  The coral was really pretty and there were all different kinds and colors. Some looked like brains, and some looked like flowers.   There was such a big variety! 

I learned that coral is an animal and they are related to the jellyfish. Coral makes seaweed around it so fish can eat it and they get food. The coral eat little particles in the water with their tiny mouths they have all over them. They grow by splitting in half every time each piece gets big. They make baby corals by laying eggs that float up to the top and hatch and the baby floats down to the bottom and lands on a dead coral. The baby grows and splits in half over and over to grow big! The seaweed that grows on the coral is a food source for the fishies and the coral. The coral gets some of the nutrients that the seaweed gets from the sun because there isn’t enough food for the coral.

I saw and learned lots of amazing sea life on the trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Despite the bad equipment the funny tourists, the trip to the Great Barrier Reef was so magnificent!

 Sarah