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“Captain James Cook's ship, The Endeavour, hit a coral outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef in 1770. Cook and his crew camped in what is now called Cooktown for nearly two months while making repairs. Then they sailed south, where Cook claimed the east coast of Australia as British territory.”
― Julie Murphy, Great Barrier Reef Under Threat

“You certainly don't fuck about trying to ride manta rays.”
― Douglas Adams

“The Great Barrier Reef is so extensive that no human mind can take it in, the exception perhaps being astronauts who've seen its full length from outer space. Gigantism pervades its statistics. Roughly half the size of Texas, it encloses some 215,000 square miles of coastland, sea, and coral. It extends for about 1,430 miles along Australia's east coast, and encompasses around three thousand individual reefs and a thousand islands. So vast is it, in fact, that it's only since the 1970s, with the establishment of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, that a size has been more or less agreed upon. Prior to that, explorers and navigators gave varying figures for its length.”
― Iain McCalman, The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change

“Finally, on October 26, 1981, the Great Barrier Reef received what two of its finest historians, James and Margarita Bowen, have called a 'conservation climax' - World Heritage listing 'as the most impressive marine area in the world.' The Reef met all four of UNESCO's 'natural criteria.' It was an outstanding example of the earth's evolutionary history, an arena of significant ongoing geological processes and biological evolution, a superlative natural phenomenon, and a significant natural habitat containing threatened species of animals or plants with exceptional universal scientific value.”
― Iain McCalman, The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change

“The village was kissed by a kaleidoscope of colour â€� on the facades of restaurants, hostels and hotels, boutiques and bars. Fresh seafood was the star of every menu, of course, with the lobsters basically walking up the sand and straight onto the plate. But for me, the star of Caye Caulker wouldn’t be the sun or the sea, it would be him.”
― Dana Da Silva, The Shift: A Memoir

“I chose to trust him when he said that the sharks were like the “dogs of the seaâ€� and took aim, plunging into a shark-less patch of ocean. The water stole all my senses in a second, then a tail called them to attention, whipping my legs as I surfaced among the bubbles, my heart pounding.”
― Dana Da Silva, The Shift: A Memoir