Posted
on June 11, 2016
 |
| The Great Barrier Reef from space |
The
Great Barrier Reef is a gorgeous place, by some definitions the
largest living thing on Earth, visible, even, from space! Thousands
and thousands of different sorts of species – from dolphins and
dugongs to fish and sea snakes, from sea turtles and sea grasses to
mollusks and crocodiles, from sponges and anemones to sea stars and
seaweeds, and of course thousands of corals – live on the reef.
It
does not seem like it would be difficult to discover such a huge
thing – and it seems like the discovery would be a fun and
beautiful thing.
But...
The
Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Australia, a place
very far from and indeed not yet discovered by European explorers.
And the discovery wasn't so much of a “Oh, look! How beautiful is
that!” as it was a “Oh, no! What did we run
into???”
On
this date in 1770, English explorer and naval officer Captain James
Cook “discovered” the Great Barrier Reef the hard way – by
running his ship The Endeavor aground on it!
Once
your ship is aground, it's not so easy to fix the problem.
After
being stuck for an entire day, Cook and his crew finally freed their
ship by throwing overboard 50 TONS of stuff. Then they still had to
repair the damage. And only then could they get back to following
their super secret orders: to search for a major southern continent
and claim it for England.
A
couple of months later, Cook would discover and explore Australia and
New Zealand. Even though the former is considered a southern
continent, it wasn't the huge landmass that so many people thought
MUST exist to balance out the Earth. (Have you ever noticed that
there is way more land in the Northern Hemisphere than in the
Southern?)
Now,
what about that reef?
Here
are some of the kinds of species that live on or near the reef:
dugongs
30 species of whales and dolphins
saltwater
crocodiles
17
species of sea snakes
6
species of sea turtles
7
species of frogs
125 species of sharks/stingrays/skates
49
species of pipefish
9
species of seahorses
more than 1,500 other species of fish
215 species of birds
5 species of marine spiders
more than 20 species of marine insects
more than 5,000 species of mollusks, including octopi and squids
more than 630 species of sea stars and sea urchins
about 1,300 species of shrimp, crabs, and krill
more than 100 species of jellyfish
about 720 species of sea squirts – or ascidians
more than 300 species of “moss animals” - or bryozoans
more than 400 species of corals
about 500 species of worms
about 1,500 species of sponges
15 species of seagrasses
about 500 species of seaweeds
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