Wild Reefs of the Outer Great Barrier Reef | Life You Rarely See

Here on the outer Great Barrier Reef, most people never get to experience what's hidden below. From rare corals to creatures most divers never even notice. I'll show you what everyone else swims right past. Come for a dive with me. This is Reef Craft. Today we're diving at Flynn Reef just off Cairns and I was on a liveaboard surrounded by some amazing divers. I have to admit the weather wasn't perfect but that's never stopped me before. Below the waves everything slows right down. The visibility was still a little bit murky but most of what I'm showing you isn't affected at all. So let's start things off with the Sarcophytum species. These yellow ones are a little rarer and I tend to only find them in Fiji or the Great Barrier Reef and all of the polyps of all the Sarcophytum species that you found around this area were absolutely popping and that's because of the amount of food and nutrients in the water they were feeding all day and this long tentacle one is no exception. I saw a lot of dog-faced puffers on the reef. They're incredibly personable and often follow me around on dives but the moment I look back at them they turn away and sort of tuck their tail off to the side and despite this shy sort of demeanor they are carrying one of the ocean's most powerful toxins Tetrodotoxin which is quite similar to this next fish albeit a slightly different toxin. This is the spotted boxfish and this is one of the cutest smallest ones I've ever found hiding in a crevice. Just look at that little thing. Being the Great Barrier Reef I knew I had to film a heap of Acropora species and in this particular area there were heaps of bottle brush Acroporas like this Acropora liripes. Acropora liripes is an awesome species. It has these really tubular axial corallites as well as the radial corallites that are almost naked. They have one side that tends to have no other polyps on it and the other side will have these tiny little pocket-shaped corallites that hold each polyp. This species comes in a wide range of colors from this pinkish colored one you can see here from the purples the blues as well as sort of like this yellowy browny color and this definitely wasn't the only Acropora. Here you can see Acropora humilis with the large dome-shaped axial corallite as well as finger-shaped branches which is completely different to this Acropora salago. These ones have these scale-like radial corallites and then there's this Acropora echinata. Was not expecting to find this. It is a species famous in the aquarium hobby and I only found it at around eight to nine meters of depth. On this reef also found Acropora nasuta, a really cool one and then because we're in the shallower waters there's a lot of different staghorns and this one was Acropora muricata most likely. You can see the close-up here. It has the different sized corallites all the way down the branch. You can see the smaller ones in some upcoming shots. So you can see the smaller corallites here and the larger ones. Never super confident with these staghorns unless it's an absolute dead giveaway like this next one. This is Acropora florida. The large thick branches with the bush almost coming off in every single way and always common in these high energy areas. These species dominate the shallows but later in the dive I'll show you some deep water Acropora that most people don't get to see, so stick around. On this particular dive there were a weird amount of giant morays and when I mean weird I think I saw six or seven. I don't know if it's just the day or the time or whatever it was but there were heaps of them. In the other cracks and spaces between the corals, cardinal fish packed the reef in huge numbers. These yellow striped cardinal fish were in the thousands and typically sheltering among Acropora branches. One of the most well-known wrasse species is the melanaris wrasse or the pinstripe wrasse as it's also called. They're typically extremely hard to film but this one just sat perfectly for me. It's really really cool to see these guys in their natural habitat because in captivity these guys make amazing pest eaters and it's really cool to see them going around searching for their food on the corals and on the rock work looking for these pests to actively eat. I followed this guy for a while so let me speed this up just to show you what's in the background. That is a leopard wrasse. Now these guys are also pretty common in this area and are typically shy in the aquarium however they seem to be quite boisterous in the wild which is quite interesting and just have some of the best colors you'll ever find. A couple of cryptic species. This is the six line wrasse. Everyone knows about these guys. They're angry as everything and a quick shot of a scarlet wrasse weaving through the reef. This is a small secretive little wrasse and it rarely sits still long enough for me to get a clear look. In this area there are heaps of species of wrasse and I can't film them all in one dive but here's this final shot of this checkerboard wrasse. Tucked within the reef a few corals that aren't often seen in the wild. This pectinia is one of those really cool bright highlighter edges to it. Real funky grower too. On the tops of reef I found heaps of myralina scabricula. Grows these delicate branches that have these maze-like pattern on them and this one had purple tips. At first glance you might think this is an acropora but it's a hydrophora species. When you look closer you can see that the whole structure is completely different. This little bumpy coral is acanthastrea pachycepter which typically forms larger colonies but here on the Great Barrier Reef it's often found as solitary polyps like you can see here. A little bit further down the reef slope I found this pavona cactus and this is one of my favorite corals as I have it in every single one of my aquariums. It grows these really delicate leaf-like structures that break and then grow again helping it spread around the reef. At Flynn Reef there are a few well-known spots where you can find nemo or the peculiar clownfish. They live in a symbiotic relationship with anemones like everyone knows and this one particularly is hanging out with a magnifica anemone with these stunning pinky purple tips and in real life it was more of a bluey color however out of the camera it's come out looking like this. You can tell this one is a peculiar clown because it's got the darker outlines around its stripes. Montipora species are incredibly common in these shallow areas of the Great Barrier Reef and you'll find ones like this Montipora indata which is ridgy and sort of a plating coral as well as these colorful Montipora dinae. At least that's my best guess. It's really really difficult to ID these guys in the water and they're sort of part of a species complex but they all are covered in this distinct papillae which are small bumps or nodules that give it a pebbled or bumpy kind of look and all the coralites are immersed in amongst all of this. This is really cool there was actually these rock boring urchins and in this what I think is a grisea is another rock boring urchin and the papillae on this almost give it like a spiky texture. This also to me looks like Montipora flower eye and that rich purple really caught my eye underwater. Now let's take a look at a couple of chroma species I came across. First these tiny blackbark chromas then a pair of bicolor chromases. They seem to be grooming a patch of the reef likely preparing to lay eggs and when I noticed this I decided I'd just let them be. And down just a little bit deeper there was this ambon damsel and it's a really really cool damsel they have these bright blue eyes that really stand out. In the shallows there were also quite a few tridacnus cormosa clams or the giant fluted clam and they came in a wide range of colors. I've got a few close-ups look how beautiful that mantle is as it comes out. If you look closely it does look like it's been nipped quite a bit by fish and here's a different one again a blue sort of lightning strike kind of coloration on it. And if you're asking yourself what could be nipping this well it could be these. These are coral beauties and they were absolutely everywhere shooting in and out of the cracks. Such a stunning little fish it wasn't the only angelfish I found also found an emperor angelfish swimming up in the shallower waters. Sticking with the theme of reef nipping I caught this triangular butterfly fish red-handed. They're well-known corallivores and it's so cool to witness this behavior up close. As we venture down the slope I came across a massive fimbria filia anchora more commonly known as a hammer coral and when I zoom in you can see why the tips of the tentacles kind of resemble little hammers and you can also see the skeleton forming those characteristic meandering walls. Okay like I promised earlier I said I would go a bit deeper and I'm going to show you some corals and fish species you're a lot less likely to see. Now you'll notice a lot of it is a lot more sparse and this acropora speciosa is almost growing in the shade under this large overhang. This species in the aquarium trade is called a deep water acropora and it's not a hundred percent true you can find these up higher however they have a tolerance to go deeper and hence you find them in areas like this. There's a surprising diversity of acropora species down here and I'm pretty sure this is acropora granulosa which again it can grow higher but it looks different when you get down here. And here's an example same depth but different growing conditions it had just a little bit more light and it looks more like what you would expect. Down here I came across a bottle brush shaped acropora acropora longiceuthis. At these depths this species has thick prominent main branches with sparsely populated horizontal branchlets and elongated coralites. What may surprise some people is you also find seriatopera species down here which a lot of people usually say they need a lot of light and a lot of flow. A lot of flow is true but not necessarily a lot of light. This one not a hundred percent sure it's either acropora speciosa again or it's caroliniana and honestly I'm leaning more towards speciosa because caroliniana usually has a more tapered polyp like you can see in this smaller image but again not sure if you know let me know. Also was able to film a couple of rabbitfish species down here these two bar rabbits you always find them in pairs rabbitfish are very very social fish and again these gold spot rabbitfish in a pair and they are always actively grazing on algae which helps keep the entirety of the reef running healthy. As I was scooting around the caves I started to notice the floor moving and there was a lot of ramfords gobies around. This species diet mainly is based around detritus so it kind of makes sense that it's down here. This next coral is truly rare both in the wild and the aquarium hobby. I've actually never seen one of these before this is cantharellus jebi an encrusting disc coral that stays attached spreading over the rock as it grows. I found it at around 20 meters deep on a reef wall drop-off right next to this homophilia australis which kind of suggests that they like the same sort of environments. Swimming upside down in this cave was also a harlequin tuskfish a species synonymous with the Great Barrier Reef. Fish and coral weren't the only things I was finding down here. Check out how cool this marine flatworm is it's thought to feed on small invertebrates that live on the sponges in the coral reefs rather than eating corals themselves and they have the most interesting mating behavior of almost any animal in the whole animal kingdom. They use a particular part of their body and use it to fence with other flatworms trying to inject the sperm into the other flatworm. Don't believe me look it up it is well worth it. As I start to ascend from my dive on the edges of these slopes you also find these non-photosynthetic corals like this tabastrea micranthus and was cool to see its polyps out during the day. I also found these massive pachyceris speciosus in sort of the crevices and cracks of the reef. I absolutely love the texture of these corals and if you look at it closely it's all like the folds and it's always full of tiny little gobies and other fish and shrimp. A bit of an overlooked group on the reef are the seabrims and emperors. They're actually quite common but in my experience they tend to be more solitary like this. Other solitary fish I encountered on the dive were mainly predatory species like the coral trout and other grouper species. Back on the upper reef I came across something incredible a pink glitter goni. I see a lot of different goniopora species in my dives but it's rare for me to find one this impressive. If you look closely here you can see these white silvery speckles all over the polyp and tentacles. This feature gives that sparkly glitter like coloration that is known as glitter gonies. In my experience it is so rare to find glitter gonies especially on these sort of colors and I know it's a bit more common in the aquarium industry but trust me I dive a lot and I do not see these very often at all. Of course there were other species of goniopora and all of these are extremely difficult to ID. This particular one was encrusting over the rock but it also has features that kind of make it look like goniopora lobata and check out this massive goniopora colony growing over the sandy patches of the reef. It's seen better days with this coral starting to grow in the dead sections of its skeleton. That one was attached but there's also heaps of free living ones and they sort of fill all the gaps and cracks in the reef like you can see here. I'm not going to go into the species there's a lot there. Except for this one, this one is a heliophungia or the long tentacle plate coral. It's also living freely so it's detached from the reef and you do find these guys sort of in the same sort of areas as other disc corals. Coral I don't hear too much about but is actually quite common is astriopora. The surface looks pitted making it look somewhat like an asteroid and the colonies I find typically are covered in mottled colorations. A lot more famous is this xenia or heteroxenia known as a pulse coral because it can independently pulse its tentacles to capture food. Between the coral colonies and across the sand there were heaps of blacktail grub fish. This is a species that actually wasn't described up until 2007. A quick rapid fire look at some of the other coral species I came across in my dive. Different dypsastria and phovites colonies giving those brain-like structures as well as galaxia species with their long sweeping tentacles and a wide range of chalice corals showing all kinds of shapes and colors across the reef. One of the last coral groups I filmed on this dive was Lobophilia. This genus has grown significantly following the reclassification of Symphilia into the Lobophilias. For these next two I'm actually not 100% sure so let me know if you know but they kind of resemble Lobophilia Robusta but also Phidiensis. Definitely leaning towards Robusta especially for this second one. Yeah not 100% sure so let me know and again I'm not 100% on the idea possibly Lobophilia Flabelliformis which doesn't have a lot of records in the Great Barrier Reef. These little colonies do show the flabello-meandroid structures with tightly compacted elongated valleys and thick fleshy polyps. As I made my final ascent I stopped to look for fish and shrimp in a massive Pocillopora colony as well as a nearby bushy Acropora Microcladus and then something unexpected caught my eye. A clownfish tucked away amongst the Acropora. So of course I had to take a closer look. Hidden within its branches were heaps of candy apple bubble tip anemones. Honestly the reef always has these little surprises that I just don't ever expect. Okay that's all I've got for today. I hope you enjoyed coming along for the dive and let me know if you like this style of video by dropping a comment because no matter how many times I dive in an area there's always something new for me to find and bring back to you. Don't forget to like and subscribe and follow along for the journey and I'll also have a few of my other videos on the screen for you to check out. Alright I'll catch you on the next one.