Cairns is a pleasant resort town of about 175,000 people. Everything here is perfectly groomed and maintained.

After our cruise ship docked we walked down the pier and boarded a large catamaran on a chartered Sunlovers (https://sunlover.com.au/) trip to the Great Barrier Reef.

After about 1.5 hours we reached the Moore Reef on the outer 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.

Earlier in the cruise we attended an interesting talk on board by a Pilot captain. As ships such as ours transit along the coast of Australia between shore and the reef it is a law that a reef pilot must join the ship to support the cruise captain for the entire time we are within the reef area. It apparently saves the ship an entire day to transit in this body of water as opposed to outside the reef limits, which of course saves a lot of money for shipping lines. Fortunately the Pilots ensure that very few ships run aground and damage the reefs.

Side note, during the talk by the Pilot he shared a video by a marine biologist who was very optimistic about the future of the reef. So while it isn't as healthy as it was in the past apparently all is not all doom & gloom.

At arriving at Moore's reef the catamaran docked at a permanent pontoon. There we had lunch, followed by snorkelling. Here the coral is deeper than in Bora Bora so less sunlight hits the coral and therefore the colour is less clear. Nonetheless we had a great time snorkelling with the coral & fish.

We also went out on a glass bottom boat and learned more about the reef as we watched the fish and coral from above.

It was another 1.5 hour boat ride back to port. It was an exhausting 8 hours, but a very satisfying day.