What Makes It So Great?

Now I'm sure everyone has at least seen a picture of the Great Barrier Reef at some point, but what do you really know? After doing some reading I found out I didn't really know that much...

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world. (But I'm sure could have guessed that because really how many other coral reef systems can you name?) What I didn't know though is that you can see the Great Barrier Reef from space...wow. It is the largest structure made by living organisms.

View of the Reef from space!

What really interests me personally in the reef are the animals. There are actually species of animals that only live in the Great Barrier Reef and no where else on Earth. There are also several endangered species located in the reef as well. This includes 6 out of the 7 kinds of endangered sea turtle, the largest mammal the blue whale and dugongs. Dugongs are a kind of sea cow that closely related to elephants. (I find them to be so cute)

An adorable dugong!

At some point in my life I really wanted to be a marine biologist, so I did a lot of reading and looking at pictures of sea life. This is something I would love to get the chance to finally see in person.