On our last day here on the reef, we were lucky enough to have a clear calm snorkel.
One of my favourite fish is this one who looks like the inspiration for 1970s fashion
and then a quick trip round to the next cove to see the green turtles chomping on sea grass in the shallows.
We missed them yesterday when it was windy so we were particularly glad to see about 7 or 8 today. Sorry about the quantitiy of photos!
Most of them have sucker fish (long green things) attached to them – they eat the turtles dung and clean parasites off them, they also eat what comes off the bottom as the turtles graze.
However these fish clamp onto the turtle with their large oval sucker plate and can get quite fat – so basically the turtle has to pull them along as well which, if you have 3 of them, must sap their energy.
Some turtles had none and looked just as clean. Others tried to wipe them off with their flippers – this seemed quite ineffective.
The turtles tolerated us swimming very close and just carried on eating and coming up for air.
They are wonderful animals.
David also spotted a flounder:
We have seen the very big lizards Cook saw when he named the island but I didn’t get a photo. Instead you can admire these amazing trees whose beautiful seed-pods remind me of medieval costume!
We also reattached a sunbird nest with dental floss as it had been blown down in the wind – a flimsy but ingenious creation:
On a little plane back to Cairns & we are off to Uluru tomorrow!!
Here a few photos from the day before.
The last one is Eleanor cleaning shells while we wait for our boat to refloat!
This is beautiful mama and papa