Here, like bees to honey, they flock to divers around the world.
The great barrier reef is one of the most visited natural attractions of Australia; the largest coral reef in the world.
In fact, it is a underwater Park, consisting of 900 Islands and 2,900 individual reefs. The total length of the reef – more than 2,500 km, This underwater ecosystem is so large that you can see even from space.
The fabulous world of picturesque Islands in the coral sea from year to year attracts thousands of tourists. Well, divers are attracted to the distant reefs and remote atolls. Many scientists believe the Great barrier reef is a true wonder of the world. It is not for nothing called Great. After all, around the perimeter of the reef is covered with billions of microscopic coral polyps. The mazes of the underwater Kingdom is home to more than 5000 mollusks, more than 120 species of sharks and thousands of fish bone.
All this located just 50 km from the coast of Australia. The best island-resorts in the system is Hyman and Bedarra. In these and other Islands coral reef tourists find luxurious beach holiday, plenty of entertainment and of course opportunities for scuba diving. The origin of the reef occurred about 25 million years ago, but the Europeans learned about its existence in the 18th century thanks to George. Cook.
Its the beginning of the reef coast in the North and stretches to the South, changing color like a rainbow, depending on the living organisms that inhabit it. Here and soft corals, sponges, and algae, and a long branching coral, and saucer coral. This is a mobile menagerie, because in every nook necessarily hiding any animals. However, coral world is extremely fragile and even a slight change in temperature of water leads to the extinction of some organisms.
For this reason, there are a number of rules of conduct in this area developed by the government of the country. For example, corals are not allowed to touch during underwater excursions. To swim up to them also undesirable. On the Islands of the Great sea reef nest hundreds of species of birds. Among them there are petrels, tropicbirds, white-bellied sea eagles. In the marine ecosystem inhabited by whales-killer whales, Moray eels, stingrays, sharks, clown fish, parrot fish and many other animals.
On the Islands well-developed infrastructure. There are luxury hotels, diving centers, playgrounds for mini-Golf, and on Hamilton island even has its own airport where planes land from Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and other major Australian cities.
