World Heritage  |  Marine Biology  |  Marine Parks   Behaving at the Reef  |  Marine Life Down Under   Reef History  |  Reef and Water Activity  The Reef Take a big box of Mum's sewing pins, cut all the heads off and coat these in a thin layer of limestone clay. Now continue this process until you've enough pinheads to cover an area in the vicinity of 2,000km long by 1 to 50 metres in depth, of varying widths and construction designs. This procedure must be completed beneath the surface of the ever-restless and awesomely powerful Pacific Ocean, whilst being occasionally battered by tropical cyclones, covered and uncovered by rising and falling sea levels. Complicating matters further, the tectonic plate the bedrock sits upon, is also shifting in a variety of directions. In reality, the Great Barrier Reef is not one continuous structure, but a series of isolated constructions (around 3,000); however this collection of reefs has had to reconstruct itself so many times over the last quarter of a million years or so, that the above example is actually rather conservative. Mother Nature has managed to not only succeed with the above miracle but also to populate it with such an oh so prolific, rich, delectable, marvellous and mysterious collection of diverse lifeforms, all inter-relating and co-habitating in complex, unique and remarkable symbiotic and mutually compatible relationships. Here in Far North Queensland, we're lucky enough to be blessed with the most multifariously, multitudinously and myriad amount of amazements to be found within any reef environment on the planet. In many areas off our coast the water visibility is almost beyond belief. All of the above, combined with such things as the easy accessibility of some of the world's finest dive sites, tropical island paradises and exquisite coral cays, helps ensure our popularity with every category of hands-on tourist from all over the globe.