The Aussies are justifiably proud of the largest coral reef on earth - the Great Barrier reef.
Look,that ship is hanging up on a coral reef
Beyond the coral reef the open sea was dark blue.
the multifarious life-forms that can be found in a coral reef
The effect was most pronounced in winter, when there's less sunlight available to fuel reef growth.
One wrong move and the reef could unravel in a day.
A coral reef may build up to the surface of the tropical ocean.
They're eating so much that they're pushing out native reef species.
This beach is also protected by a reef, so the waters are calm and tranquil; they are relatively shallow.
Home to 400 coral species, the Great Barrier reef is a Mosaic of approximately 2, 900 offshore and inshore reefs.
Photo Gallery: Marine Marvels a freckle - face blenny peeks from its reef burrow in the Solomon Islands.
On a coral reef in the Bonin Islands, an abandoned wormhole is home to a hermit crab.
Rising ocean temperatures, water pollution, ocean acidification and cyclones continually pummel the reef and have caused mass coral bleaching.
A diver swims among tropical fish in a Horseshoe Bay coral reef in Indonesia'sKomodo National Park, another of the seven natural wonders on the new list.
So stressed middle-sized fish make for both happy coral and happy predators—in short, a healthy and highly productive reef.
When the regime could no longer refute the evidence, they finally approved rehabilitating the coral reef and making it into a Marine refuge.
A quarter of all sea species spend at least a part of their life in a reef-and many reefs are in cold or temperate waters.
Unlike its mobile Cousins that forage the reef for food, this crab stays put and fishes for floating plankton with its feathery antennae.
In the radio drama "Nau em Taim" (" Now is the time "in Pidgin) aired in Papua New Guinea, a widowed father takes up dynamite fishing-profitable but disastrous for the reef.
"Really this live reef food fish trade, which transports these fish to Hong Kong by sea and air, it really has been like a vacuum cleaner going through the reefs of the Asia Pacific," he said.
While there, we walked through the Daintree Rainforest with an aboriginal guide, toured a wildlife preserve where I cuddled a koala named Chelsea, and snorkeled around the magnificent reef.
