By Everett Potter

I’ve been fortunate to snorkel in the Red Sea, the Galapagos Islands, and various reefs in Hawaii and the Caribbean. None came remotely close to plunging into the South Pacific Ocean and snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef. That first view of an underwater landscape of corals in a vast number of colors, shapes, and textures was a veritable octopus’s garden. What made it genuinely dazzling were the immense schools of colorful parrot fish, the manta rays, sighting a Māori Wrasse, and spotting a white-tipped-reef-shark swimming in the depths below me.

“Sharks are a sign of reef health,” said Alan Wallish, the founder of Passions of Paradise, a company that offers tours of the Great Barrier Reef. “Everything must go right to have sharks on the reef” … continue reading