Outer Great Barrier Reef

Our first trip the Great Barrier Reef actually started Friday evening in search of stinger suits.  These are lovely outfits, generally black with colorful highlights made entirely of body hugging Lycra.  No matter what you wear, all will be revealed in one of these babies. If a tour company is taking someone on a snorkel or dive during box jelly season, they are required to have stinger suits available.  We went ahead and purchased ours as we expect to be snorkeling over the next couple of years and chances are it will be during jelly season.  Ours have hoods and mittens attached and you almost need to be an Olympic athlete to get into / out of one.  To my knowledge, no pictures exist yet of me sporting mine.

Saturday dawned with with some clouds and gusty winds.  We went to the harbor, got on the boat and headed to Green Island.  Once on the island, we dressed in our stinger suits and went to the beach to check out our snorkel gear one last time before going to the Outer Reef.  All worked fine.

We then boarded the second boat and went to an anchored platform on the Outer Great Barrier reef and jumped in.  It was WONDERFUL.  The waves were a little choppy and it was a work out paddling around but the coral was beautiful and the number of fish incredible.

For me the best thing was the school of Humphead (aka Bumphead) parrot fish we bumped into.  They were HUGE.  Talking to a marine biologist the next day, she said they can grow to over 6 feet and 100 lbs.  These are the biggest fish I have every swam with.  Unfortunately, by the time we saw them, we had already blazed through our 27 pictures on the disposable underwater camera.  Here's a video for you to get the idea.  Apparently no one has explained to them they aren't supposed to touch the coral as they were eating it left and right.  They crunch very loudly.

We also saw several giant clams.  They are so cool.  I really wanted to tap one to see if it would close.  But I restrained myself.

We have not found a place yet to get our underwater pictures developed yet and I have no idea how they turned out.  Here are a couple we did take though...

Outer Great Barrier Reef from the platform.

Giant clam through the observation window.

BTW - no stingers spotted!