Adventures In The South Pacific: The Great Barrier Reef

We spent most of our time in Australia birding in the rainforest, but we also spent a significant amount of time along the coasts, and one day was completely taken up by a glass bottom boat/snorkel tour over the Great Barrier Reef.
In contrast to the rainforests, the reef showed readily apparent signs of human damage. You might be familiar with photographs of coral reefs that show it vibrantly colored, with corals, sponges, and sea anemones in every shade imaginable. There were certainly still some colorful corals in the part we visited, but for the most part their colors were beginning to fade away, and many of them seemed unhealthy. We were, after all, visiting in the aftermath of one of the largest recorded coral die-offs in recent memory. Increasing water temperature and acidity causes the symbiotic algae corals use for nutrients to "bleach" and die, leaving only the dead shell behind. That said, the "bleaching" in the area we visited was nowhere near as bad as it is in some other parts of the reef, and abundant animal life was still present, such as giant clams, parrotfish, and sea turtles.
We also visited a sandbar island that was used as a rookery by a nesting colony of brown noddies (a type of tern). Like many seabirds, noddies nest on these offshore islands to prevent their chicks from being preyed upon by ground-dwelling predators. On many of these islands, introduced predators such as rats have decimated the seabird populations, and now the only ones left are usually ones that are officially protected, like the one we went to.
The reef gave me a very different impression from the rainforest. In the rainforest, the ecosystem I was surrounded by truly felt like an untouched wilderness in many places. The coral reef was not like that. It was certainly impressive and beautiful, but at the same time it felt as though it had seen better days

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Though still full of life, the part of the Great Barrier Reef we visited was showing signs of bleaching.