FISH!!!!

So we have been somewhat out of touch for the past week. Started out in the Coral Princess with a lovely cabin and only 17 of us passengers.  Almost as many crew as tourists.  A morning visit to Cooktown and then off to Lizard Island to visit the giant clam beds.  Wow!!!  Giant is right.  I think the largest was 5 feet across.  Mark and I both got to do a preliminary scuba dive.  Once I admitted to asthma, though, not to mention the heart issues, they never let me get deeper than a meter.
Over the next three days, we snorkeled and dove at 4 more fantastic spots.  Ribbon reef no. 3, Ribbon reef no. 9, Escape reef, and more on Lizard Island.  It was a difficult trip...get up early, eat, snorkel, eat, snorkel, drink, eat, sleep.  Oh my.  So much for losing weight while I travel!  There were so many fish, we didn't have to swim far or fast.
Finally, though, the fish were awesome.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the coral.  It is terribly stressed,  every bed we were at showed major signs of bleaching.  Though beautiful, all those shiny whites piles of delicate calcium are not the thing we want to see.  In addition, many of the beautiful blues and Reds were sadly showing a sickly mushy brown and yellow color.  On the way to bleaching.  They had little rain in the "wet" so the sea temperature was too high for the past six months.  They are hoping that the winter "dry" will be cool enough to let the coral recover.
After the boat trip, we stayed in Palm Cove for a few nights.  We swam within the jelly nets and took long walks through the mangroves, but only in daytime as we were warned to avoid them at night...dangerous people or crocs....Took a trip through the Daintree and visited Cape Tribulation where Capt. Cook visited in the 1700s.  Black tip sharks swam in the shallows of the ocean and crocodiles lazed in the shallows of the streams. Everyone told us to stay clear of the streams and do not swim in the ocean there.  In addition to the crocs, there were swarms of little deadly jellyfish so everyone only swims within the netted areas at this time of year.  We swam in a safe stream in the Daintree - clear and too fast moving for the crocs - and enjoyed Billy Tea and tucker before heading back to the hotel.  This morning, we hear that a 40 year old woman got et by the crocs in front of our hotel....OMG!  EVERYTHING inAustralia seems dangerous.  Oh well.  Having a good time.  Off to camp and hike in the Outback at 5a.m. tomorrow morning.  More when we get back