The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is located of the coast of Queensland and covers a total area of 133,000 square miles. The Great Barrier reef is comprised of 2,900 individual reefs and over 900 islands. The first recorded discovery of the great barrier reef occurred in 1770 when lieutenant James Cook crashed into it. After that there were many more shipwrecks until it was mapped by the Australian goverment in the early 1900s. Some parts of the Great Barrier Reef are estimated to be over 2 million years old but scientist estimate that most of the reef is around 500,000 years old.

The Great Barrier Reef is home to over 400 different spieces of coral and more then 1500 spieces of fish and new ones are discovered each year. There are 30 spieces of whales dolphins and porpoises in the great barrier reef along with 17 spieces of sea snake and 6 spieces of sea turtle and 215 spieces of birds and 30,000 spieces of crustations in the great barrier reef.

The rivers of northeastern Australia pollute the reef during tropical floods and over ninty percent of this pollution comes from agrucultural fertilizer and pesticide use.