Located in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia, the great barrier reef is the largest coral reef system in the world.
Formed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands it stretches for over 2,300km (1,400 mi) from the tip of the Cape York peninsula all the way down to Bundaberg.
It can be seen from space and is the world’s single biggest structure made by living organisms. Pretty impressive, right?
Little surprise therefore, that the great barrier reef has one of the richest marine environments on the planet.
Over 360 species of hard coral are found here, including bottlebrush coral, staghorn coral, bubble coral and brain coral.
It’s also home to over 1,500 species of fish and six of the seven species of marine turtle, including rare loggerhead and even rarer hawksbill turtles.
Scuba divers can also encounter numerous shark species like silky sharks, grey reef sharks, whale sharks and even hammerhead and tiger sharks here.
Around the southern edges of the great barrier reef, manta rays are frequently sighted and even dugong can sometimes be spotted in the reef’s shallow seagrass beds.
There’s also 5000 species of sponge, 600 echinoderms (starfish, sea stars and cucumbers), 10,000 mollusk species including giant clams…
..Not to mention sea snakes, cetaceans like humpback and dwarf minike whales, jellyfish, crustaceans and pelagic birds such as sacred kingfisher and eastern reef egret.