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GREAT BARRIER REEF

Cairns is the closest gateway to the Great Barrier Reef - said to be the world’s largest living structure and the only one visible from outer space, the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

Here you can discover a whole new underwater world and greet over 6,600 species of flora and fauna, including 1,500 species of fish, 4,000 species of molluscs and 400 types of coral.

The Great Barrier Reef is scattered with beautiful islands and idyllic coral cays and covers more than 300,000 square kilometres and ranges from Torres Strait in the north to the unnamed passage between Lady Elliot Island (its southernmost island) and Fraser Island in the south., The Great Barrier Reef is home to a stunning array of animals, from microscopic plankton to whales weighing more than 100 tonnes. More than just fish and coral, the Great Barrier Reef supports:

The different types of animals found along the Great Barrier Reef help make it one of the richest and most complex natural systems on earth. While there is a lot known about some of the animals that make the reef home, vast amounts of information and species are yet to be discovered.
Corals make up the various reefs and cays. These are the basis for the great variety of sea and animal life in the Reef. Coral consists of individual coral polyps - tiny live creatures which join together to form colonies. Each polyp lives inside a shell of aragonite, a type of calcium carbonate which is the hard shell we recognise as coral. The polyps join together to create forests of coloured coral in interesting fan, antler, brain and plate shapes.
The ideal environment for coral is shallow warm water where there is a lot of water movement, plenty of light, where the water is salty and low in nutrients. There are many different types of coral, some are slow growing and live to be hundreds of years old, others are faster growing. The colours of coral are created by algae.

reef shots