Photos from 2002 October 07
Today was my last snorkeling trip to the reef. I have to say, it was not quite as much fun as the Falla trip in Cairns. The reef itself was amazing, as usual, but the boat was crowded and much more slickly commercial. This photograph is of Snapper Island, so named because it looks like a crocodile going out to sea. It's right at the mouth of the Daintree River, so it really does look like a croc swimming out of the river.	This is Louise, who is giving the standard snorkel instruction/safety lecture. This gets to be something like the >fasten your seat belt/ use your seat as a floatation device< talks on airplanes after a while. Still, she did her best to make it entertaining.	We went to three dive sites, and on the way from the first to the second, Louise gave a talk about the reef, its ecosystem, and the kinds of fish and coral we were seeing. This part of the reef was very different from what I had seen before. It was much deeper, the current was stronger, and there were some different kinds of fish. I saw a sting ray, and a whole school of about 20 barracuda. Someone I was chatting to on the boat saw a white-tipped reef shark, but I missed out on that one. I did see tons of starfish and anemonae, and a couple of hermit crabs. Lots more giant clams, too. The barracuda were pretty freaky.	This is a 180 degree panorama shot of our last dive site. One thing I learned from this is that it's pretty much impossible to do one of these panorama shots when (a) your landscape is constantly changing (i.e. waves) and (b) your vantage point is constantly moving (i.e. waves). Still, you can kind of get a sense of it.
Here's some of the crew as we all tried to get our shoes back, having given them up when we got on the boat (this is so that 120 pairs of shoes wouldn't be lying around the boat in random locations). All in all, the reef was truly a world wonder, and I wish I had gone out on more than three trips. Absolutely stunning.
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