Animals in the ocean see the world in a different way to humans. This may seem obvious but it is usually a surprise to many to learn how different these differences may be. This talk gives a whistle-stop tour of some of my past work but mostly focusses on the current discoveries of others in mantis shrimp, fish and cephalopod vision. It also examines how humans see the reef. We will discuss animals with the best and worst colour vision in the world, invertebrates and vertebrates, colourful animals that use colour for sex and violence, animals that dispense with colour and choose polarised light instead. Our methods include training shrimp to jump through (non flaming) hoops, high resolution MRI and the usual array of molecules and pretty things that glow in the dark. Part of our work now of course also involves climate change and CoralWatch, a citizen science approach to this. One take home message for you is to stop what you are doing immediately, walk out of this room and do something more useful, “…we only have ten years left to save the earth.”