Big Coast

Wild Australia with Ray Mears

S01E01 Ray Mears explores the Great Barrier Reef starting on the Queensland mainland taking a boat out to Hervey Bay with whale expert Wally Franklin. They witness a mother hump back whale teaching her three month old calf the whale moves needed to survive the long migration to Antarctica.He flies out to Lady Elliot Island at the southernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef where he goes scuba diving on the coral reef and discovers giant turtles and manta rays and shoals of big eyed trevelly fish.Back on the island Ray helps marine biologist Maggie O'Neal plant a Pisonia tree and finds out how the Pisonia trees kill the Black Noddy bird's that nest in them in order to use their corpses as a fertile compost given the unforgiving ground of a coral island.