Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel 160 kilometres (100 mi) wide in places and over 61 metres (200 ft) deep. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.

Quotes

• Flowers turned to stone! Not all the botany
  Of Joseph Banks, hung pensive in a porthole,
  Could find the Latin for this loveliness,
  Could put the Barrier Reef in a glass box
  Tagged by the horrid Gorgon squint
  Of horticulture. Stone turned to flowers
  It seemed—you’d snap a crystal twig,
  One petal even of the water-garden,
  And have it dying like a cherry-bough.
• ... [T]here were more shoals outside
  Than teeth in a shark’s head.
  • Kenneth Slessor, "Five Visions of Captain Cook" (1931), II