The Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef
There's one more thing that I want to share before I move onto my adventures in New Zealand, The Great Barrier Reef. This is somewhere I've been longing to visit my whole life as I'm sure many others have. To experience the bustling life of the coral reef first hand and feel a part of a living, breathing underwater ecosystem.
When you hear the name of this place, you expect it to look like this..
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Or this...
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You know like Finding Nemo
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Just look at those colours!
Well the truth is that tourist companies do whatever they can to lure you in. Just like I lured you in by putting the most colourful picture first.
The Coral in The Great Barrier Reef is more of a dull shade. They call it "brown coral" and it's not supposed to be really bright and colourful like everyone thinks.
The Great Barrier Reef was my first time ever scuba diving outside of a pool. I was super exited to do it in such a reknown location of the world! I travelled all the way from the United Kingdom to experience the bustling life that awaited me to find this...
)
What you see here is me on one of the most "popular" tours of the great barrier reef. It's the remains of what once was a natural beauty. A graveyard of broken coral litering the floor.
"The further you go out, the more you'll see" everyone will tell you, because the polution from mankind has destroyed this beauty.
Well, we were on the boat for about an hour before we reached the first diving sight so wern't exactly close to the mainland.
That's not to say I didn't see anything. I did!
(With the help of some fish bait)
To be honest, not long before I visited, a big Cyclone "Debbie" swept across the North East Coast of Australia and was partly to blame but I knew this wasn't the main cause.
I refused to accept this was all that was left so a week later, I went out again on a much cheaper and less known family tour to Franklin Island. This experiwnce was much different and I'm gutted I didn't have a camera at the time because for the first time in my life I swam with Turtles!
The reef in this particular location was way better but the Island was deserted and we were the only people there..15 of us. We had the Island to ourselves and not one bit of rubbish was left behind. It was spottless.
I knew this was a rare occasion though and I was extremelly lucky to stumble upon such a cheap deal. It's sad to think what the rest of the reef could be like had we humans not destroyed it through Greed and Lazyness throwing our shit in the ocean without a care, leaving our rubbish on the beach because we're too fat and lazy to find a bin.
If you have seen Blue Planet 2 you will know exactly what I'm on about but most people won't care. If it doesn't effect them personally they don't care. A bit like terrorism...as long as the people massacred arn't related then it doesn't matter. Those people make me sick and if I see any in person I'll gladly kick the shit out of them.
But back to the reef, you see I **have** been there, I **have** experienced it and it's heartbreaking to see the reality. When you get back to the shore, you look at the next people gearing up at the shop knowing what they're about to go through.
If you live on this planet, you are either part of the problem or part of the sollution. Think carefully about your actions and what they could lead to. This world needs your help in order to survive and you need it, in order to survive. 
1 person may not make alot of difference but a billion people thinking the same thing will.
In a gentle way, you can Shake the world. - Mahatma Ghandi.
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Nice, you got an awesome upgoat, thanks to @tomatom
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Great post. Have you heard of the #steemitbloggers? We're a group of passionate writers with the goal of producing consistent quality on the block chain. I'm thinking you might be a great fit for our community!
I have yeh. Tagged #steemitbloggers as 2nd or third tag I think.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Well I saw that...but have you joined the community? There's a world of support available for quality posts like this one if you are member of the community. I've not seen your name or posts in the discord, so I figured you were just using the tag.
In that case no I haven't. I deleted discord because I was getting so many unwanted notifications which didn't apply to me. However it sounds like a good channel.
It really is. You've got great content, and we are always looking for people who make great content. There's a catch though - there are daily support obligations. I'll let you know the next time a post comes out with more info and how to join. It will likely be after the new year - and we're changing our name to Power House Creatives. :-D I'd love to see you there!
Yes, please if you could send me an invite that would be great.
You got it! Look for it in about a week. :-)
What the fuck? -300+ upvotes?
Great post! I'll just let you know that your image coding had an error that caused the pictures to be displayed twice without the reference. Make sure there is no spaces between your parentheses and the photo address and a close parenthesis at the end of it (again, no spaces.)
I found you thanks to @mattifer's entry into the Pay it Forward Curation contest this week. Keep up the great work!
Hey thanks! Thats odd... I wrote this post using #esteem and didn't see.any errors...mist come up different on #steemit or pc...?
Weird. It's looking right now. Gremlins, I guess.
Great photos, @tomatom! I have never done scuba diving in my life... I must be an idiot.
PS: I've found your post because @mattifer featured you in her entry for the Pay It Forward Contest
It's an amazing experience. You should definitely try it being able to move freely up and down without having to worry about breathing is awasome. You feel like your flying.
I'd recomend doing it in the sea though rather than just a pool.
Thank you for such a wonderful post; a necessary cautionary tale in this world! Franklin Island must have been spectacular too. Sooner, rather than later, I really hope that the world begins to take heed and realize that we must coexist with this earth as opposed to continually trying to conquer it!
I found your post because @mattifer highlighted it in her Pay it Forward Curation contest entry. Feel free to join us any week with an entry of your own :)
Thank you for visiting 😁