Great Barrier Reef — coral reef
Image by alicia3690 from Pixabay

Great Barrier Reef

  • 1 min read
  • 16.400° S 145.800° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage
  • UNESCO natural beauty

Interesting facts

  • On 11 June 1770 James Cook's ship Endeavour ran aground on the reef, and repairing her took about seven weeks.
  • The reef got its name from Matthew Flinders, who charted it in far greater detail in 1802.
  • Aboriginal Australians have lived alongside the reef for at least 40,000 years, and Torres Strait Islanders for about 10,000.
  • In places the reef lies up to 160 kilometres from the mainland, across a channel more than 60 metres deep.
  • Close to 5,000 species of molluscs have been recorded on the reef, from tiny sea snails to giant clams.
  • Seventeen species of sea snake live in its warm waters, at depths of up to about 50 metres.
  • Six species of sea turtle breed on the reef: green, leatherback, hawksbill, loggerhead, flatback and olive ridley.
  • About 215 bird species visit or nest on its islands, and between 1.4 and 1.7 million seabirds breed there.
  • More than 1,600 shipwrecks are known in the reef region, a record of how treacherous its shoals were to sailors.
  • Thirty species of whales, dolphins and porpoises have been recorded in its waters.

Why it is worth it

At around 344,400 square kilometers and roughly 2,300 km long, the Great Barrier Reef isn't one reef so much as some 3,000 individual reefs and hundreds of islands strung together — a footprint about the size of Italy or Japan, and by most measures the largest living structure ever built by living organisms, coral included. It's living habitat for well over a thousand fish species, hundreds of types of hard and soft coral, and dozens of species of whales, dolphins, and sea turtles moving through it at different times of year.

That scale hasn't made it immune to stress. When water gets unusually warm, corals expel the colorful algae living in their tissue and turn ghostly white — a process called bleaching that isn't always fatal on its own, but leaves coral weakened and vulnerable if the heat doesn't ease up. The reef has been through documented mass bleaching events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025, and researchers estimate roughly half of its shallow-water coral cover has been lost since 2016 alone — a fact worth knowing before you go, not instead of going.

There's still an enormous amount of reef left to see, and it changes character depending on when you visit. Dwarf minke and humpback whales pass through the northern reef from around June to October, with July and August the peak; further north, a multi-species coral spawning event follows the November full moon most years, a synchronized release that briefly turns whole reef sections into a snowstorm underwater.

Best time to visit

June through October gives the most reliable conditions overall — dry weather, calm seas, the best underwater visibility, and whale season running alongside it. Visit in the weeks after the November full moon for a chance at coral spawning instead, if timing allows.

Getting there

58 km from Cairns. Cairns International Airport (CNS) is about 53 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Queensland 6The Most Beautiful Places in Australia 55The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Islands in Australia 5The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Coral Reefs 5The Most Beautiful Islands in Australia 7The Most Beautiful Coral Reefs 10The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty in Australia 10The Most Beautiful Islands Seen on Screen 11The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Australia 12The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Islands 15The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Australia 23The Most Beautiful Islands 59The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty 77The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221The Most Beautiful Water Wonders 429The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

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 mi2). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. It is 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. CNN labelled it one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World in 1997. Australian World Heritage places included it in its list in 2007. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland in 2006.

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