- Do you know all the living things of the Great Barrier Reef?
The Great Barrier Reef is located on the East Coast of Australia. It’s covered by the surf that rises out over the ocean.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef in the world.
It’s called the most magical marine environment on earth, and is over 2,000 kilometers up the Australian coast.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet and is made up of almost 3,000 different reefs.
Each reef has their own personality and is so much more than coral. It’s in this place that there’s more life than almost anywhere on Earth.
The reef is also known as nature’s miracle, it’s so large, it can be seen from space.
Tiny animals that look like plants called polyps created the reefs.
Polyps live together in colonies and respond to touch, temperature, currents, and the cycles of the sun and moon. Their movements combine to give each colony their own rhythm.
Polyps need smaller partners to help them build the reef, in the way of millions of tentacles. The tentacles are filled with tiny brown dots and is a microscopic plant. The “plants” turn sunlight into food and energy for the corals. This allows corals to turn water into limestone and build their bony skeletons. This is how reefs grow.
Coral provides homes for thousands of creatures.
Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface but contain a quarter of all marine life.
Within the Great Barrier Reef:
- 400 species of hard coral
- 300 soft coral
- 1,600 species of fish
- 134 shark and ray species
- 30 species of whale and dolphin
- 6 species of turtles
- 14 species of Sea Snake
- 3,000 species of mollusks
- 1,300 species of crustacean
With all the fish of the reef, it’s as busy as a city with perpetual rush hours.
The reef is very young compared to the country of Australia.
As little as 20,000 years ago, this reef didn’t exist and the area wasn’t underwater. There would have been hundreds and hundreds of miles of eucalyptus and paperbark forests in its place.
Animals of the Australian plains lived in the area at one time, along with Aboriginal People as well in areas now deep underwater.
When the ice at the poles melted at the end of the last ice age, it flooded the coast.
Shallow, tropical, clear and warm water are the perfect conditions for coral to thrive, making this coast the best place for the Great Barrier Reef to thrive.
Sheltered behind the long strip of reef, a lagoon was created, and it protected and area of water larger in size than all of Great Britain.
There are 600 islands that exist in the lagoon, some are no
more than rocks. Other islands are substantial mountains covered in woodland.
There are fish in the reefs that are coral eaters, plant eaters, and plankton eaters. There are the hunters and the hunted.
Shark Mackerels are also called the greyhounds of the ocean. They need speed and agility to eat the silver fish who dart around in unison as one, confusing their prey.
Small fish have to leave the protection of the reef to feed.
Gigantic Grouper has one of the largest mouths in the Great Barrier Reef.
Wrasses are teeny tiny fish that are blood sucking
parasites from within the Giant Groupers mouth. It’s symbiotic, as the grouper would be infested without this intervention.
Wrasses can eat 1,200 parasites a day from all over the grouper’s body.
The White Damsel attacks more divers than any other. This fish is a constant gardener, nurturing and caring for its algae.
Because it makes it’s own food, it’s very territorial over it and chases away other fish from the algae it created.
Makes a loud warbling sound to try and get divers away. Sounds almost like a dolphin.
Some fish destroy the reef, Bump Head Parrotfish. The
size of a small small sheep. This fish has a tough beak and gigantic jaw muscles that work like bolt cutters.
The bump head parrotfish eats soft algae and coral polyps but they only way to get at them is by shearing off chunks of the coral reef . Their second set of teeth grind the coral into a paste.
Each year, five tons of coral is eaten and then excreted back into the Great Barrier Reef as sand.
As fast as it grow, the parrotfish break it down again. The reef is always in constant change.
The ocean water damages the coral, too.
The reef crest is the point where the waves generated by open ocean impact the hard surface of the coral reef. 
The ocean water is an unstoppable force.
Tropical storms and cyclones from the Pacific Ocean whip in and smash into the reef, and into the coral below.
What’s your favorite Great Barrier Reef fact so far? For more, follow the link for The Living Things of The Great Barrier Reef: Part Two, coming soon.
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