The Great Barrier Reef
The Aussies are justifiably proud of the largest coral reef on earth — the Great Barrier Reef.
It can be seen from space and is believed to be the world’s biggest single structure made from living organisms.
Composed of some 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands, it stretches for 1,616 miles and is strung out over 133,000 square miles of the Coral Sea in Queensland, north east Australia.
Already a World Heritage site, it generates $1bn a year in tourism revenue.
Nature Reserve in Haiti
Macaya Nature Reserve in Haiti, with unknown numbers of rare animals and plants.
Moreton Bay Fig Tree in Kauai, Hawaii
An Old Castle
A Frog and a Beetle
Using its suction discs for a firm grip, a
Baobab Tree, Kalahari Desert
Desert with Scorpion Weed
Desert with Phacelia Distans (Blue Scorpion Weed) which flowers once in several years. It is a genus of about 200 species of annual or perennial herbaceous plants, native to North and South America. Heliotropium (to which family Phacelia belongs) is a genus of flowering plants in the borage family, Boraginaceae. There are 250 to 300 species in this genus, which are commonly known as heliotropes. The name ‘heliotrope’ derives from the fact that these plants turn their rows of flowers to the sun (helios [sun] and tropein [to turn] in Greek). The Old English name turnsole has the same meaning.
Wooden Bridge
An unusual tunnel in California’s Sequoia National Park. [Unusual? I’ve seen lots of wooden bridges!]
Dandelion covered with Dew
Rainbow World
Blooming tulip fields in the Netherlands. From mid-March to the end of May the tulips transform large parts of Holland into a colourful patchwork. [Photograph: Hollandluchtfoto/Getty Images]
More Rainbow World
Lake Retba in Senegal, west Africa. The wooden vessels are salt-collecting boats photographed from the air, bobbing on the lake – the pink tint is not a huge strawberry milk lake, but is due to the presence of algae called Dunaliella salina. From above the mass of water – which spans one square mile – it looks a creamy pink colour. And just like the Dead Sea, swimmers can float on the water with ease. The bizarre colour is caused by high levels of salt – with some areas containing up to 40% salt content. [Photograph: SPL/Barcroft Media]
Mustard Fields
Mustard fields at Niujie in Luoping, Yunnan Province, China. They are known as the ‘snail farms’ due to the unique snail shell like terracing. Luoping also has vast areas of rapeseed. [Photograph: Katie Garrod/Corbis]
Autumn Leaves
Lake Bled in Slovenia
Bird-of-Paradise Flower (Strelitzia reginae)
Shell Falls Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming
Green Shoots of Spring...
...with Melting Ice
...at Ouseburn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
...at West Fork, Indiana
...at Langdon Beck, Northumberland
...with Small Fry
Baked Marshmallow Sky
Low clouds over a volcano
High Tide?
Victoria Falls, Zambia
A Sunflower Opening
Dead Camel Thorn Trees
Dead camel thorn trees, vachellia erioloba, in Namibia. The name does not refer to a camel, but rather to the Afrikaans name of the giraffe, meaning “camel-horse”, hence the old botanical name (acacia giraffe). [Photograph: Alamy]
Thor’s Well
Thor’s Well also known as “the gates of the dungeon” on Cape Perpetua, Oregon. At moderate tide and strong surf, flowing water creates a fantastic spectacle.
Sunset from Inside a Wave
Volcano with Lightning
Mountain Sunset
A Stream through the Trees
Luminescence is Beautiful
Sunrise...
Photographers watch the sunrise at Praia do Norte on the Atlantic coast of Portugal.
...and Surf
This is what they were looking for: big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara riding a monster wave at
Praia do Norte
Eastern Brazil is Home
A two-year seabed study off the eastern coast of Brazil confirmed that the Abrolhos shelf is home to the largest known continuous bed of rhodoliths in the world. Sometimes mistaken as coral, rhodoliths are roughly spherical objects on the ocean floor that are made of many layers of hard red algae. Together with kelp beds, seagrass meadows and coral reefs, rhodoliths are one of Earth’s largest seabed primary producer communities.
Caiman and Capybara
A caiman (left) and a capybara (right) at a lagoon at the Hato La Aurora, Colombia, a private nature reserve of 17,000 hectares that is home to more than 350 species of birds and hundreds of animals including deer, jaguar, iguanas and giant anteaters.
Trees growing on Rock
Giant Surf
Curved Trees
These trees grow in a forest near Gryfino in north west Poland (not far from Szczecin). The pine forest looks as if it came right out of a Hans Christian Andersen story. Some four hundred trees in the forest have been formed with a 90° horizontal bend in their trunks before rising vertically again. The trees are believed to be about eighty years old and although there is no explanation for this freak of nature one widely held belief is that the trees were shaped this way by human hands (possibly by carpenters wanting to use the wood for furniture making).
Seychelles Beach
Anse Source d’Argent beach on La Digue island, Seychelles
Starfish
Ship Passing through Iceberg
Ice, South-east Greenland
Orchid
Thick-spiked coelogyne orchid (Coelogyne pachystachya). Despite its thorny name, this organism is pure white, elegant and majestic. It is native to Thailand.