A Tortoise Amongst The Turtles

Last night we had the first bad weather ever (excluding temperatures of >40oC which is pretty much an everyday occurrence). We saw a thunderstorm over the Indian Ocean which is a few steps away from our 6th floor apartment. Usually everyday here is blue skies and very, very sunny. It's so bright outside it hurts my owlish Canadian vision unless I wear sunglasses. Anyway, we didn't get too much rain that night but we did manage to figure out how to bottle lightning, in .png format.

Fremantle at night - brightly lit structure is the Fremantle Port building, behind that is the Maritime museum poking out.

I think it looks like a man jumping down a steep mountainside.

 

 

And today, we paid a visit to the Aquarium of Western Australia (AQWA). This facility's main attraction is a  giant plexiglass aquarium which you can walk underneath in a transparent tunnel, like the one at Ocean Park in HK. The aquarium features sharks, rays, turtles, and for the first time ever, ME.

That's right, homes. I'm goin' in the shark tank. WITH SHARKS. Unfortunately I just ate some Weetbix before I got there, so I had to wait at least 30 minutes before swimming. In the meantime we toured the aquarium's other exhibits.

Moving walkway for underwater plexiglass tunnel in main aquarium

I think this is a cleaner shrimp, but I'm not sure. They labeled only some of the animals in each display like there's soooo maaaany fiiiish do i have to label allll of themmm ennnhhhhh. So very Australian.

Found Nemo. There was a movie about this process?

 

Octopus, not a blue ringed one though. They had a display for a blue ringed octo, but I couldn't see it. Octos are well known for their propensity to escape aquariums. So either he was very well hidden or was out for a walk.

Huge rock lobster. This one was probably as long as my femur.

Jerryfish - hard to photograph with all the blue light. I don't know why they turned up so faintly. My knockoff Photoshop that came with my camera couldn't fix it.

 

 

Jelly jar.

If you get stung by jellyfish nematocysts, you should not pee on them.

You can scrape off the tentacles with a credit card. Some people advocate applying papaya extract or meat tenderizer, both of which contain papain, a protein thought to aid in jelly fish stings but the evidence for this is not strong.

The most deadly jellyfish in the world is the box jellyfish,  which is all up in hea in Australia.

But these are not box jellies.

Luckily for Canadians, the only jellies in Canada are pretty mild stinging creatures and the only treatment needed is to rub a bunch of beach sand on the affected anatomy.

 

Come to me my jellyfish friends.

This fish here is commonly known as an "old wife" because it grinds its teeth to make a noise that reminded sailors of their grumbling wives back on shore.

Bunch of old wives. It's like The View for fish.

Can't remember what kind of eel this is but it hides in a hole with its head sticking out and that's pretty much all it's got on the resume these last few years.

 

ain't no party like a seahorse party

It's like one of them just spilled a beer on the rug. They wouldn't stop looking down.

Aw guys my mom's gonna kill me.

junior better not have any friends over while i'm gone

CUZ I GON KILL HIM

i'll get some paper towel

Box pufferfish. Becomes neurotoxic by means of the toxic food it ingests. Later at the hands of an inept chef, you also become neurotoxic. And the circle of fugu life is complete.

That's right sushi aficionados.

WE PLANNED IT ALL ALONG.

holla

No fish here.

Or are there? There are in fact three fish down in front. Red sea stonefish, poisonous and sneaky.

But I'm hungry NOW.

Loggerhead turtle. This guy wouldn't stop swimming into the glass headfirst.

They have very poor eyesight.

He was just a wee one but in the tank the big ones will bowl you over like a blind bus driver.

Underwater tunnel!

 

Whaler shark. You can tell if a shark is a fast swimmer or a slow swimmer by the size of their dorsal fins. Big fins mean they swim fast and need a lot of stability for sharp cornering. Small fins mean they're kinda pokey.

Shark butt.

 

A smooth ray. He likes to go by smoove.

Business end of a ray. The barb is what killed Steve Irwin.

 

 

This is a monster smooth ray. Three. Hundred. Fifty. KILOS. Even more amazing when you look at the dinky size of the mouth. When he swims over top of you everything goes dark.

 

Scuba diving in an aquarium is a little more complicated than I thought. Instead of keeping neutrally buoyant so you can ascend and descend easily, they weight the crap out of you so you sink and stay on the bottom. Then you kind of gator crawl around the bottom of the tank trying not to get in the way of the wildlife. I'm not used to having so much weight on me. They use steel tanks which are heavier than the aluminium ones, and they loaded me up with 18 pounds of lead shot when I usually use 12. It's a big difference. On top of that, I was taking my GoPro with me for the first time.

Nurse shark - they have a pretty pronounced overbite. Although they look mean, if they bite anything bigger than a five dollar footlong they'll choke on it.

When I did my initial descent, I descended butt first cause all my weight was there. I hit the bottom and couldn't get to a kneeling position, or roll over. I felt like an upended tortoise. Pretty much the whole dive was me slowly twisting to one side like a listing ship until I had to furiously struggle to right myself. This is well documented on video where you can see four seconds of a massive turtle passing overhead and then vicious vomit inducing nausea as I forget to turn off the video and fight to stay upright. Wash, rinse, repeat. I only posted the videos that weren't nauseating. Also, my photos are a little blurry because I couldn't hold still long enough to take a steady picture. Lessons for next time.

Still, it was nuts to see these huge animals up close. The turtles and rays pass right over your head, close enough you can feel them brush your hair back. Sharks, not so much but they were impressive enough from where they were.

Always smiling for the camera.

A nurse shark and a doctor wife.

The long tube is a vacuum for the guy cleaning the premises.

 

 

I didn't realize it was so hard to shoot video underwater. Not only are you trying to shoot something interesting from different angles and maximize the lighting, you have to make sure you're still paying attention to your diving gear/buddy. New respect for the job. Ain't easy.

This turtle's all "Wheeeee!" and I'm like "ahhh help can't get up". You know you look bad when a turtle makes you appear ungainly.

The dive master, Chris, was a 21 year old guy from Ireland who had made PADI divemaster in 2 years through a college program. I remember thinking that this expert diver was ten years younger than me and was going to be responsible for my life for the next forty minutes or so. Granted, a dive of 4.5 meters isn't really a dive but still. It reminded me of what my patients always without fail comment on when I first meet them, which is "But you're just a baby!" I think what they're really saying is "You can't know what you're doing." I reflected on this and decided to give Chris a chance. Not that I had a choice, already having forked over the dive fee.

Up and over the choob.

Wha... wait something's wrong.

Whoops there goes my flipper.

Chris helped me get my fin back on. Like I was Cinderella. There's some lesson in this about age and trust but I'm not able to say exactly what it is. Everyone can figure it out for themselves. Just like the missing fish labels. It's the Australian way.

Preparing for exfil

End of the moving tunnel walkway, and the dive. Tired and ready for home.

First requirement of being a pool boy - know which tube goes in your mouth and which tube goes in the fish poo.

Eagle ray, chillin, checking the Twitter feed.

 

 

Port Jackson shark

So hot today. I've never sweat like this before. It's beading on my arms like I'm Saran Wrapped cheese in a hot lunchbox.

It's not REALLY dingo flour. That's kind of a misnomer. It's actually more of a dingo paste.

Home.