The Great Sea Reef, Fiji

Fiji’s coral reefs are incredibly colourful, and the Great Sea Reef, the world’s second- largest barrier reef, is the biggest and most colourful of them all.  A huge wealth of species is found in the reef, far too many to list here, so here’s a small selection:

Parrotfish: this large, colourful fish possesses a hard beak (like a parrot) which iit uses to break off and eat dead coral and snip algae.  When lying on the soft sand of Fiji’s beaches, a good fact to try and forget is that much of the sand comes from the parrotfish’s excreta, which turns coral into find sand.

Hawksbill sea turtles also glide through the reefs.  This medium-sized sea turtle is a real beauty, with its rich amber, reddish or golden colouring and the amazing patterns of its serrated shell.  These turtles are found everywhere where there are coral reefs and warm waters, and often make their way to Fiji to feed and breed.

The Yellow-lipped sea krait, a sea snake.  These elegant creatures have a short, paddle-shaped end to their tails, perfect for swimming and navigating through the reefs.  They are predators, feeding on much larger eels which they immobilize with their venom.  This venom is incredible potent, about 10x more powerful than that of the deadly North American rattlesnake.  Despite this, they’re not aggressive and bites on humans are practically unheard of.

Dappled eagle rays, named for their wing-like pectoral wings, glide and flap through the sparser sections of the reefs.  Like all other rays and sharks eable rays have no bones; instead, their skeletons are made from cartilage, just like your nose – and their mouths are on the bottom of their bodies.  What weird fish!