The real Great Barrier Reef is not just a single clown fish or a colony of branching stag horn coral. Nor is it simply the crystal clear water, cocktails and beautiful bodies of the tourist ads. It is not just the stage for murders, mishaps, shipwrecks, or shark attacks. The real Great Barrier Reef is a living thing – a 2600-kilometre-long, untamed organism, made up of trillions of animals. It is the magnificent and terrifying home to the wild things of nightmares and hallucinations. James Woodford wanted to understand the real reef in all its complexities and along its entire, extraordinary length. For a year he worked and dived with marine biologists, exploring it from the coral outpost of Lord Howe Island in the south to the crocodile haunted waters at the reef’s northern boundary in Cape York.