Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

Everyone in my family is a certified diver, so after they came to collect me from Sydney we went up to the Great Barrier Reef. We ended up going on about 10 dives (one was a night dive) and they were all fantastic! We saw so many beautiful fish and coral! We didn't see any Great White sharks, but we did see several White-tip Reef sharks, Black-tip Reef sharks, and Gray Reef sharks. They're all pretty shy and rarely give people any problems. There were also Green sea turtles and eels and Lionfish and Giant clams...ah, I could go on for days! But a picture's worth a thousand words, so I'll just let them do the talking. Dad has a Cannon digital camera with an underwater housing, so we were able to get some great shots. Here are just a few.

Family pictures are much easier to arrange when the kids can't complain about them!

The reef was simply teeming with life!

We found Nemo!This little guy is a fancy kind of sea slug called a nudibrank (which is just fun to say--whoever came up with that name must have had a sense of humor).

At first you might mistake this guy for an eel, but that could get you into a lot of trouble! This a sea snake. They're not usually aggressive, but they are very curious and extremely poisonous. We had to be careful not to kick them by accident when they were swimming around our fins!


This was definitely the highlight of my trip! These are Minke Whales from a pod of about 15 or 20 that had come to check us out. It's the smallest type of baleen whale at about 20-25 feet long. We also saw a calf that was only about 10 feet long! They were very curious and would swim up close to get a good look. Here's a short video to give you an idea of how they move.



Coming next: New Zealand pictures!

Traveling with my family!

I'm back in Texas! It was hard to leave all of my friends in Sydney, but it's great to be home! I didn't come straight back, though. My mother, stepdad, and three younger sisters met me in Sydney and we did a bit of traveling before coming home. These pictures are from the first half of our trip.

My family in front of the opera house!

Notice that I'm driving on the WRONG side of the road on the WRONG side of the car. Somehow I managed not to kill anyone...

Here's all of us in the Daintree Rainforrest in Queensland.

Coming next are SCUBA diving pictures!