The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is a reef before the coast of Australia. It's in the northeast of Australia and it's about 2,300 kilometers long. The reef consists of 2900 single reefs and 1000 Islands . There are 359 hard corals, 80 kinds of flexiblecoral and sea-feathers/springs, 1500 different fish types, 1500 kinds of sponge, 5000 kinds of soft animals and 800 kinds of echinoderm like for example the sea-star. You can find six from seven kinds of sea turtles, that are excisting all over the world, at the great barrier Reef. The special kinds are : The false Karettenturtle and the Pacific soup turtle.
The reef had been discovered between 1766 and 1769 from the Frenchman Louis Antoine de Bougainville. But it's named after Matthew Flinders, who made a map of the reef in the 19 century. In this time the reef was a big danger for the sailors and not passable.
Many ships had some cruel accidents over there, and things like that happen also today.

The reef is made up of million little organisms, known as coral polyps. The reef gets all his fascinating colours from the different kinds of water plants, like algae. These algaes can be found in the corals. There are about 400 different kinds of corals.
Corals can just live in clean and at least 20 degree warm water, but because of global warming, water pollution and overfishing the reef will be completely destroyed in about 50 years. 50.000 coral reefs had been destroyed because of tourists. And also because of diving, boats, hurricanes and drilling for oil.
Every year 8 million tourists visit the reef and in 2003 they spent over 4 million Australian dollar.

Tourism:

About 2 millions tourists visit the reef every year. Most of them want to go snorkling. The area for snorkling is separated from the sea by nets under water. So that there are no shark attacks or any bad accidents.

Made by Sophie