Townsville - Reef HQ Aquarium

Townsville is on the northeast coast of Australia near the Great Barrier Reef. The reef is a bit closer to shore north of here, which is why Cairns is more of a gateway to the reef than Townsville. Still, there is some reef tourism here and they have an aquarium called Reef HQ which has done a really good job of displaying what a reef ecosystem is like. It isn’t huge or fancy, but we really enjoyed the displays and the educational talks/demonstrations.

We did learn some new things. We knew the bit about sea stars' rather disgusting practice of pushing their stomachs outside of their bodies to dissolve their prey, but it also turns out they have an eye on the end of each leg. How did we not know this? Oh, and their butts are on top (away from the mouth, which is on the bottom, of course). Sea snails like the red mouthed stromb have eyes too. Cone snails, we learned, are all venomous; some to such a degree that they can kill a human. So now we can add these diminutive mollusks to the disturbingly long list of creatures in Australia that can kill you.

Black Tip Reef Shark


Leopard Shark


The aptly named Unicorn Fish

Colorful Anemones


Deborah's Jellyfish Video No. 1 (7 sec)

Deborah's Jellyfish Video No. 2 (17 sec)


 Lion Fish


 Turtle


 A solitary Grouper


Finding Nemo


 Finding Dory


Oh, oh, there she is again.

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