03rd December 2016
On our last tour we went to Phillip Island to see a colony of the smallest penguin of the world, the little blue penguins. Currently it´s breeding season and they come back from the sea every night to their nesting site. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures. During daytime I could take a picture of one of the babies. We also did a tour to see a colony of the Fur Seals, it was amazing, probably more than 15000 seals were there.
28th November 2016
On this route we saw plenty of kangaroos, birds including pelicans and seals.
13rd November 2016
Wild Koala at Noosa National Park and some animals at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
16th November 2016
It was an amazing moment to see the sea turtle laying their eggs. It was limited to took pictures to not stress the animals.
15th November 2016
Some pictures of animals and flowers on our way from Townsville to Gladstone. Some are taken in the zoo in Gladstone.
11th November 2016
Some animal pictures from the park and the surroundings of the island.
10th November 2016
The building and the entrance made a good appeal to me. Some of the people working here are volunteers, including pensioner who give you information about the animals here in this facility. The variety of the animals are not that much, but the corals are real and not made of plastic and the species are appropriate husbandry. They do not have marine mammals, only a few big fishes like sharks are here. This facility is well constructed and offers a lot of learning material. During the day they offer programs like presentations, feeding time of the animals and a turtle hospital. The tanks are in a good condition and the corals diverse. The main tank is divided into two parts, on one side you can find the coral fishes and on the other side the big predators. The turtle hospital really impressed me, I haven´t seen such a facility before. You really feel sorry for the turtles who are injured in this station. Most of the injury are caused by humans, fish nets, plastics, etc. For me this aquarium was worth to visit.
08th November 2016
The name “Great” really stands for this huge nature wonder, an over 2000km long coral reef landscape where we only saw just a little piece of it. We dived at the outer reef but unfortunately we didn´t see any big fishes, only the common smaller reef fishes. The coral landscape was nice to see, but we also saw some bigger areas which was covered by algae and / or Cyano bacteria, in Indonesia we didn´t see them at all. But here we saw some giant calms (Tridacninae), really huge, some are round about 1m long. We didn´t really see coral bleaching during our dives, but the local people say that on the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef the hard corals died due to the warmer water temperature. But I have the feeling that the local people don´t like to talk about this topic, probably not really popular among the divers.
08th November 2016
Lots of birds are here in Australia, the biggest one is the cassowary bird. Some pictures were taken during the night walking
through the rain forest.We also visited an orchard.
02nd November 2016
The variants of birds here in the Northern Territory is amazing, so many birds you can see and hear.
02nd November 2016
The Indo Pacific Marine is a small private facility which is run by John and his wife for more than 30 years.
Unfortunately this facility is already ageing, most of the tanks are not in a good condition, lot´s of corals are already dead. But we also like this facility because of the idea behind it. John
always give a private tour through the different exhibitions and explains everybody about the Marine underwater world, starting from the microorganism of the ocean to the big animals, the complex
coherences of this ecosystem and of course the dangers which threat this ecosystem. The facility has one big reef tank as well as some small species tanks. Because I know how difficult it is to
maintain a reef tank, I think the work you have to do to maintain all the tanks they have is not possible for only two of them. I guess that´s why the conditions of the tanks are not really in a good
shape. But I have to say the learning effect of this visit is huge, John has a huge knowledge about the Marine ecosystem and he shares this knowledge to his customers. For me it was worth to go, I
have learnt much more about the Marine ecosystem.