If what the National Geographic and numerous history books state is true, it is this writer’s opinion that ancient mariners either really missed their girlfriends a lot or had the worst eyesight ever to have mistaken the dugong for mermaids.

Classified as Vulnerable to Extinction by the IUCN Red List, Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are herbivores that graze on sea grass. Closely related to the elephant, dugongs actually do grow tusks. However, only the tusks of male dugongs ever break the skin to become visible. Dugongs also closely resemble another species of marine mammal: the manatee. One way to distinguish these two very similar-looking animals is the tail. Dugongs possess fluked tails which look much more like the tails of a whale or dolphin as compared to manatees, which have paddle-shaped tails. Herds of these creatures have been observed, sometimes numbering into the hundreds, although dugongs normally are found in mother-offspring pairs.

Along with dugongs, the Great Barrier Reef is host to a variety of whales and dolphins, including the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). These awe-inspiring creatures have the perhaps the largest appendages in the animal kingdom, with their flippers reaching up to five metres in length. The unique patterns on their tails can be used to identify individual whales, especially when they engage in the signature behaviour that has earned these whales their name. When diving to feed on plankton or small fish, humpback whales will dive and arch their backs (hence the name), causing their tails to surface high above the water. Returning to the surface, humpbacks may also breach, driving their 20-30 ton bodies clear out of the ocean in a spectacular display.

Another interesting aspect of humpback whale behaviour is the phenomenon of ‘escort whales’, as seen in this video here. Escort whales are male humpbacks that follow and aggressively defend any female that allows them to follow. Thought to be a form of courtship gesture, humpbacks are also known for their hauntingly beautiful whale songs.

When the exceedingly popular animation Finding Nemo was released, it brought viewers into a world of brightly coloured fish, comparative to the varieties and hues one would see on the actual Great Barrier Reef.

Of the close to 2,000 different species of fish on the reef, perhaps the most famous of them all is the Clown Anemonefish, Amphiprion percula. However, it is the closely-related False Anemonefish, Amphiprion occellaris, who are the stars of Finding Nemo, going on an amazing adventure through hostile waters fraught with danger. Still, perhaps what is more amazing is what happens daily on the great barrier reef on what has come to be known as ‘cleaning stations’.

Cleaning stations, prevalent in the Great Barrier Reef and in other reefs around the world, are sites where Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) and other species of similar wrasse attend to clients of all shapes and sizes who gather for cleaning. Like something out of a scene from yet another animated film about underwater life, cleaning stations are reminiscent of the underwater ‘whale wash’ of Shark Tale, minus the music and not exclusive to whales. Here, all predatory instincts are thrown aside as sharks, rays and all manner of fish arrive to be cleaned by the wrasse. In this mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship (explained in this YouTube video), the fish are cleaned of parasites by the wrasse, who consume these parasites as food.

Continuing with the somehow inevitable links to film, another famous (or perhaps infamous) example of biodiversity on the Great Barrier Reef are the many different kinds of sharks (more than 300 species reside on the Reef, according to Diving Cairns, a dive trip operator located that makes frequent trips to the Great Barrier Reef). Though it is highly likely that none of these sharks will ever attack a boat full of fishermen (or, maybe they will), their reputation undoubtedly precedes them. Ranging from the elusive Reef Sharks (such as the White Tip Reef Shark pictured above) to the dangerous yet strangely alluring Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) of Jaws fame, captured here by a diver on the Great Barrier Reef, sharks never cease to enthrall and intrigue.

Closely related to sharks are rays. These encompass the stingray, a specimen of which was involved in the tragic death of Australian icon Steve Irwin, and the majestic Giant Manta Ray (Manta birostris). Capable of growing to a massive seven metres from wingtip to wingtip, Manta rays are only just beginning to be understood by science. One of the two species of Manta rays identified, the Giant Manta is pelagic, meaning that they often cross oceans in extended trips of incredible distances. This nature makes them hard to monitor as an IUCN Red List Vulnerable species. However, their popularity with divers, given their docile nature (and the fact that they seem pretty OK with being approached, as seen in this video) is seen as encouraging in helping to preserve this awesome creature from extinction.

Forming the backbone of the reefs all around the world are the rainbow-coloured, plant-like creatures known as coral. Coming in all shapes and sizes, with every imaginable colour in between, corals are essential to the continued existence of any reef, and these remarkable creatures, closely related to jellyfish and anemones, start their lives in an equally remarkable way.

In this video (BlueWorldTV, 2013), underwater photographer Jonathan Bird manages to record the systematic release of coral reproductive material at night. With military precision, huge batches of eggs and sperm are released all at once into the seawater. These massed releases are a part of a survival strategy, where safety in numbers increases the chances of one of the gamete bundles, as Bird calls them, will progenate the next generation of coral.

Once fertilised, the gamete bundles settle on the seafloor. Now called polyps, the individual cells form colonies, using limestone to create skeletons to support themselves or as a means of defense by shaping them into sharpened spines known as spicules. Colonies grow when their constituent polyps undergo cell division, and colonies that meet merge to form even larger colonies. Each polyp, though sometimes possessing its own brightly coloured tissue, can also take on colours from algae (known as zooxanthellae) that they host within their bodies. These algae provide nutrients for the polyp, although there are also coral species that feed on plankton and even small fish.

Coral are basically split into two distinct types: soft coral and hard coral. Soft corals are the fashioniastas of the reef, with vibrant colours of pinks and oranges. Besides their spicules, soft coral lack a proper skeleton and are thus gelatinous, swaying in the ocean currents while their polyps wave their tiny, feathery tentacles in the water. Given their soft texture, soft corals are easy targets for predators, but they will not go down without a fight. Certain species of soft corals secrete foul-tasting chemicals or poisons while others resort to spiny spicules as defense mechanisms.

Hard coral, on the other hand, are slightly different. These types of coral create hardened limestone skeletons for themselves, eventually forming colonies of millions of individual polyps. Unlike their soft coral cousins, which can double or even triple the size of their colonies annually, hard coral generally manage a modest one to one-and-a-half centimetres of growth per year. They are the true building blocks of the reef and, given time, can reach truly massive sizes.

Both types of coral are fundamental to a substantial portion of the world’s marine biodiversity. Although covering less than one percent of the world’s seafloor, coral reefs support around one quarter of all the world’s marine species.

The first time I came to know about the Great Barrier Reef was through, of all things, a video game.

It was the first game in a series of games featuring the namesake character, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Developed by Krome Studios, the very first Ty the Tasmanian Tiger game had a series of levels set in the Great Barrier Reef. These levels were bursting with colour, and as a first-time gamer, I was enthralled by the multitudes of rainbow-coloured fish that swam in schools everywhere I looked. I was thrilled by the coral and the clear waters (although I was much less thrilled by the inexplicably hostile sharks, homing sea mines and oversized groupers, all of which were out to get me).

That was the closest that I would ever get to the Great Barrier reef. That is, until today.

In 2012, a group of scientists began a daring endeavour. Starting from the Great Barrier Reef, the Catlin Seaview Survey, sought to and succeeded in surveying “150km of reef… with [the] SVII Camera, and now 105,000, GPS located, panoramic images are currently being analysed by marine scientists around the globe” (Catlin Seaview Survey, n.d.). Several publicly available images from the survey have been compiled below. (Click on the images for a better look.)

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“To scientifically record the world’s coral reefs and reveal them to all in high-resolution, 360-degree panoramic vision.”

– The Mission of the Catlin Seaview Survey –

Working in concert with technology giant Google, the Catlin Seaview Survey was able to bring interactive ‘virtual dives’ to everyone with a working internet connection. Such dives can be accessed on Google Views, as well as the Catlin Seaview Survey site itself. It goes without saying that these virtual dives beat an early 2000’s video game rendering of the Great Barrier Reef by several lightyears.

Still, nothing can quite best the actual experience itself.

According to the Australian Government’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), there were more than one million full-day tourist visits to the Great Barrier Reef from the years 2012 to 2013 (GBRMPA). Note that this figure does not take into account other kinds of trips, such as trips that last less than one day. To accommodate such a massive number of visitors and keep them entertained, facilities such as underwater observatories have been constructed to compliment existing activities such as diving and snorkeling.

But the Great Barrier Reef is much more than just a tourist attraction: it is home to 1,800 species of fish (National Geographic, 2011), along with 134 species of sharks and rays, one third of all the soft corals in the entire world and six of seven endangered turtle species spread out over 2,900 individual reefs. And we’re not even counting the other species of marine mammals (like the dugong), molluscs, starfish and crustaceans (WWF Australia, n.d.).

Beyond being a home for wildlife, the Great Barrier Reef is also inextricably connected to aboriginal people groups who have inhabited its many islands for over 60,000 years. In fact, for these Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the Reef is more than just a home. Their cultures have long used the reef as a means of survival, for practicing their religion and to further their unique traditions (GBRMPA, 2004).

It isn’t hard to see just how captivating this place is. To put things into perspective, the Great Barrier Reef was so captivating that, even through a video game which barely did justice to its immense natural beauty, it managed to become part of a 10-year-old Singaporean child’s imagination which, until today, still lingers.

Sadly, though memory may remain, the Great Barrier Reef might not.

Going back to the virtual dives I took that were made possible by the Catlin Seaview Survey’s work, I was stunned by the sheer lack of colour. This was not the Great Barrier Reef my video game had promised me, where colour was perhaps the only word that could singly and fully describe its beauty. This Reef was dying, its coral lay strewn about, like bones that had been picked clean by animals, across a lifeless seabed quite devoid of fish. If this trend occurs across all 2,300 kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef, an unprecedented number of marine species will go extinct.

Extinction is forever. And forever is an unacceptably long time. For us, time is running out, and if we let it slip through our fingers, perhaps the only way we will ever get to see the Reef again, in paltry, sorely lacking fractions of its former glory,  is through video games.