The Great Barrier Reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the northeastern coast of Queensland, Australia. It stretches for more than 2,300 kilometers (about 1,400 miles) along the Queensland coastline, from the northern tip of Cape York Peninsula down to Bundaberg in the south

. The reef is separated from the mainland by a channel that can be up to 160 kilometers (100 miles) wide in places

. It is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and about 900 islands