Clintons Visit Australia Reef Ringed By Underwater Bodyguards, President And First Lady Go Snorkeling

With Secret Service counter-assault teams poised to stave off stray sharks, President Clinton plunged into the sparkling blue-green waters of the Great Barrier Reef on Friday, snorkeling his way past legions of iridescent fish, marveling at a giant clam and emerging unscathed.

With his wife, Hillary, Clinton spent about an hour inspecting the giant coral reef, then climbed onto a diving platform anchored in the Coral Sea to pronounce the experience an “unforgettable day,” a White House aide said later.

Wearing blue and green bathing trunks and white T-shirt, and wielding an underwater Instamatic camera, Clinton bobbed around the Agincourt Reef, conducting what amounted to a personal tour of the ecosystem he had celebrated hours earlier on shore. In a brief speech he pleaded for greater protection of endangered reefs worldwide.

White House aides who were aboard the president’s 148-foot high-speed wave-piercing catamaran, the Quicksilver VIII, along with a delegation of Australian officials, described Clinton as ebullient, and painted a slightly surreal scene of the commander in chief ringed by masked and finned bodyguards and protected by an Australian naval vessel.

In honor of Clinton’s visit, the Australian authorities announced that they were renaming a section of the reef, No. 15092, in honor of the pioneering American environmentalist Rachel Carson.

For his part, Clinton pledged continued support for the International Coral Reef Initiative, founded in 1994 by Australia, the United States and six other nations to foster preservation of reefs endangered by pollution, overfishing and other unsound uses.