We were all really excited and a bit silly when we met the boat at the pier to go to the reef. My friends couldn’t wait to get off the boat and start looking for life among the coral.

Our class had joined CoralWatch so we could study coral bleaching on this excursion to our closest reef. We first looked at their website www.coralwatch.org and ordered their education kit.

When the kit arrived, it had 30 colour cards called the Coral Health Chart. These charts show the colour of coral and the changes in its colour as it becomes bleached. How easy is that! We had to learn how to move around the reef at low tide and not damage the coral or hurt ourselves. We organised ourselves into small groups and worked out how we would look after our record sheets, digital cameras, drinks and food.