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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Next Stop: Everywhere

Image
It’s been nearly nine years since we started travelling for long periods – up to six months at a time – not just to escape the gloomy winters of Western Washington, but to see what it felt like to really live in, not just visit, another place. Australia was the first, then Fiji, Europe, Mexico, Japan and Hawaii. We did a lot of house sitting and work exchange to moderate the cost and expand the experience.  These trips only deepened our love of travel and whetted our appetites for experiencing new places. But the trip to Hawaii ended with us a purchasing a lot on the Big Island and then returning the following winter to build a house. Designing it ourselves, acting as our own contractor and doing much of the work ourselves, that project stretched to nearly two years. We loved our house and our small community in North Kohala, and made many good friends there. But we always knew our Hawaii stay would not be long term – partly because it is expensive, partly because of the inevitable
Read more

Caribbean Cruise

Image
Even before embarking on our Panama Canal cruise, Deborah and I looked ahead to its conclusion and expressed our reluctance to hurry back to the dreary winter weather of Olympia.  To remedy this we rather decadently booked another cruise that was to leave from Fort Lauderdale just two days after our Panama Canal cruise was to end. We spent the two days in Fort Lauderdale between cruises doing laundry, visiting friends, and catching up on computer tasks thanks to our Airbnb’s Wi-Fi.  Our second voyage was a 7 night Caribbean cruise with stops in Half Moon Cay, Bahamas; Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos; Amber Cove, Dominican Republic; and Key West, Florida; before returning to Fort Lauderdale. Both of our cruises were on Holland America Line (also same as for our Alaska cruise last year), which has a reputation for a somewhat older clientele. The Caribbean cruisers were a bit younger than the Panama Canal ones, but actually seemed in worse shape. Not sure I’ve ever seen that many pot be
Read more

Thailand - Chiang Mai - Elephant Nature Park

Image
We had an incredible day at Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for rescued elephants near Chiang Mai. These elephants may have been injured in the logging industry, stepped on landmines, blinded by working under circus lights, or suffered some other abuse by humans, including servitude in the tourist trade. You might think that riding an elephant is no big deal, but if you add the weight of the iron chair, the mahout (handler) and a couple of tourists, you can have half a ton of weight on the animal’s back. But to even get to the point where the elephant will allow you to ride him involves “breaking its spirit,” which means taking a young elephant away from its mother (often by killing or injuring the mother) then subjecting the captive young animal to a barbaric process known as “Phajaan.” The young elephants are constrained with ropes and chains, beaten, stabbed, screamed at and starved until they finally just give up and become submissive to their human trainers. This cruel practice
Read more