the Harbour Bridge and the Opera
House at dawn
Sydney, Australia; Feb 19, 2005
reef walking
--Feb 10, 2005
This one's a visual interlude from an afternoon
on Heron Island when Susan went wandering out during low tide.
It was possible to go pretty far out (500 meters or so). Here's
a small sampling of what she found in about 2 feet of water:
For more (and larger) pictures of Australia,
check out the australia gallery.
Captions for the above pictures
(thanks much to Ken Okutake, our undersea
guru, for helping ID everything - he was going for species,
but we stopped him at Genus):
stony coral
(Porites)
starfish
coral (Montipora)
epaulette
shark
pineapple
coral (Favites)
coral (Montipora)
& clams (Tridacna)
flowerpot
coral (Goniopora)
sea cucumber
coral (Acropora)
clams (Tridacna)
stony coral
(Porites)
brain coral
(Goniastrea)
how to see the reef
If you’d like to see
the Great Barrier Reef, we recommend going to an island
instead of doing the normal tourist thing (landing in
Cairns, jumping on a boat for a few hours, getting dumped
in the water along with a mess of other divers/snokelers,
splashing about for a while, and then getting back on
the boat). To be fair, we haven’t tried both options,
but some knowledgeable travelers and quite a few Australians
steered us in this direction, and we’re glad they
did.
boxfish
on the Great Barrier Reef
There are quite a few islands
to choose from (including Lizard Island, Green Island,
Dunk Island, Turtle Island, Wilson Island, Fraser Island,
and many more). These vary significantly in terms of accommodations,
proximity to the Reef, cost, crowdedness, etc.
We chose Heron island for
the added benefit of getting to see turtles. Heron is
also, as the name implies, a birdy-kinda-place. We were
there while they were nesting, which was mostly great
since we got to see so many, but had the downside of making
the whole place smell a bit strongly.
Hi, I just wanted to say that your photographs
are stunning! I'm really impressed and jealous!
--Lenora (United Kingdom); Sep 20, 2005
Thanks so much for your generous
compliment and for looking at the website. We're so pleased
that you wrote from the reef walking article because we
worked quite hard to get those shots just right. It's hard
when the ocean won't cooperate!
