Heron

Heron island is on the Great Barier Reef.   It is completely made out of sand which is mostly made out crushed coral.  When we were there, we went snorkeling.  We went to the "Bommies" which are giant coral domes that are called "bombora" but people here call them Bommies for short.  The Bommies was rated 3rd best snorkeling in the world by Jaques Cousteau.  We also went to the ship wreck of the HMAS Protector. It was a flat iron gun boat built in 1884 for the Australian navy and used in WWII by the US army.  The boat was about 180 ft long.  After it was damaged by a collision, they decided to use it as a breakwater for heron island.

My favorite  part of Heron was swimming with the sharks.  There were white-tipped and black-tipped sharks.  We saw huge sea turtles coming to the Bommies.   What they do is they sit on the Bommies and the cleaner fish eat the dead skin and parasites off that could hurt them.  

Mom went on a night walk and saw a huge turtle laying eggs on the beach!   In the old times the sailors were scared to go on the island at night because they thought it was haunted because at night they heard weird noises.  What they really heard were mutton birds.  What they do is they dig a burrow under ground at night and go "WHOO WHOO".  The sailors thought they were ghosts (trust me I walked alone in those woods and it was freaky).  

We saw so many fish.   Here are some of the fish I saw:

  

FISH:

parrot fish

cleaner fish

sweetlip fish

angle fish

clown fish (Nemo)

coral trout

grouper

needle fish

lion fish

Shovel head ray

Manta ray

Lemon shark

parrot fish

puffer fish

turtle

black tipped shark

me and dad at Bommies

school of fish

reef

me

me

ship

turtle tracks

one of the Bommies

helppppppp