downunder update

Meet Migaloo, a large albino humpback whale who travels regularly along the east coast of Australia during the whale migration season from late June to October.

Forget Moby Dick. The fictional white whale is legendary, but the magnificent Migaloo is living, a wondrous and unique mammal of great beauty. Records have been kept for over a century of the tens of thousands of humpback whales - but no one has seen an albino before. You don’t have to tag Migaloo with a marker, there is no other like him in all of the waters of the world.
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Rottnest Island is a special destination for interstate and international visitors. The whole island is a Nature Reserve of indigenous flora and fauna, including the curious Quokka, and no public vehicles are allowed.

Rottnest Island was named in 1696 by Navigator Willem de Vlamingh after the many large rats that he imagined he had found there. The island is still full of the marsupials he thought were rodents, the friendly little Quokkas, setonix brachyurus.

Their name, in one of the Aboriginal languages of southwest Australia, is gwaga. Read the rest of this entry »

If any animal could benefit from a total image makeover, it’s got to be the rat.

There’s a bit of attention on them at the moment, this being the Year of the Rat, and the publicity of the festivities has caused quite a few Nervous Nellies to look more carefully around the compost bin.

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Stingrays (Dasyatids) are common in tropical coastal waters throughout the world. In the waters off Australia the most common are the Blue-spotted Stingray, and the Smooth Stingray.The Smooth Stingray is a bottom-dwelling species which is recorded from temperate waters of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It’s aggressive and is easily observed by divers. This species usually has one venomous spine (the sting) halfway along the tail which is capable of inflicting severe or potentially fatal wounds. Sometimes it raises its tail above its back like a scorpion.

The Blue-spotted Stingray occurs throughout the tropical Indo-West Pacific, and is found in Australia from southern Queensland, around the south of the country and north to the central coast of Western Australia. It lives in coastal waters and estuaries from shallow water down to about 170 m. It’s often observed buried in sand or mud with only the eyes exposed.

Stingrays are equipped with a razor-sharp, barbed, or serrated cartilaginous spine that grows from the ray’s whip-like tail. This barb, coated with a toxic venom, has given them their common name. Dasyatids are not aggressive and prefer to swim away when threatened. When they do use their tails, it’s more of a mechanical reaction.

In many cases involving humans, the victims are usually stung in the foot when they accidentally step on a stingray. In the case of Steve Irwin, popular television personality, the sting from a dasyatis, probably a Smooth Stingray, punctured his heart causing causing cardiac arrest.

If you have the misfortune to be stung, get some hot water on the wound as fast as you can. First aid treatment for stingray stings starts with hot water, which eases pain and speed up the breakdown of the venom. Papain, a substance found in papaya or unseasoned powdered meat tenderizer, may break down the protein of the toxins. Pain from a sting will last up to 48 hours but is at its worst in the first 30-60 minutes.

Always keep in mind that these creatures, like others in the waters and seas of Australia, are wild creatures and should always be treated with extreme caution.

The collective noun for a group of sharks is a shiver, and rightly so. That’s what they give most of us. For more than 400 million years sharks have dominated the oceans and are regarded as a predatory killer that doesn’t discriminate between fish or humans. But if you’re worried about taking a swim, remember more people die from bee stings each year than from shark attacks. Fear of sharks has been fueled by a few rare instances of unprovoked attack and by sensationalised fiction and film until the very thought of sharks is frightening, but sharks merely maintain the delicate balance in the oceans.

There are many theories about why sharks sometimes attack people. The most popular theory is that the shark confuses us for a prey animal, we look like dinner. From beneath the surface, a surfer lying on a board looks just like a seal, and a human in a wetsuit is the same size and colour as a seal.

Surfers and divers have been attacked and have lived to tell the tale as sharks tend to take one bite and move away. We probably don’t taste the best, for compared to the thick fatty meat of a seal, .we are scrawny boney creatures, but the shark won’t know this until after a nibble.

Avoid a Shark Attack

• • Don’t swim dive or surf alone
  • Don’t swim, dive or surf where dangerous sharks are known to congregate.
  • Don’t swim in dirty, turbid, murky waters, harbour entrances, near river mouths (especially after heavy rains), deep channels or steep drop offs. These types of waters are are known to be frequented by sharks.
  • Don’t wear high-contrast clothing or shiny jewelry. Sharks see contrast very well.
  • Don’t swim near people fishing or spear fishing.
  • Don’t swim with pets and domestic animals.
  • If turtles or schooling fish start to behave erratically or congregate in large numbers, get out of the water.
  • If a shark warning is sounded get out of the water as quickly and calmly as possible.

Great Whites

The interactions that we may have are in usually close to shore with small sharks out hunting schooling fish such as snapper, but our greatest fear is encountering a Great White, the species portrayed in Jaws.

Great White Sharks are found right along our south west coastline, but generally stay in deep water as they move from southern Queensland, around the southern coastline and to the North West Cape in Western Australia. They are large, rare, and warm-blooded, the top of the foodchain, the apex of marine predators.

In Australia, the Great White is listed as a threatened species and globally. numbers have declined between 60-95% in the last 50 years. Sharks are among the most valuable and vulnerable animals in the sea but massive consumer demand for fins and other shark products have created an industry motivated by high return with ultimate, and rapid, extinction of sharks an inevitability.

For a real shark experience, with submersible bottom cage diving to the ocean floor.: Fox Great White Shark Expeditions

Australia has been sitting more or less on its own for the last 200 million years.

After separating from the ancient supercontinent Pangea, lots of unusual life forms flourished.Some of them are cuddly, some bizarre, and some are just downright deadly.

The chances of running into one of our dangerous creatures are pretty slim. You have to get out into the bush, into the interior of this great flat dry continent, or go off- track up North to mingle with our exotic wildlife.

If you’re planning to ‘go bush’ there are plenty of reserves and guided tours to take you around safely. But there are beautiful areas of seeming tranquillity, especially on the long stretches of golden sands with not a trace of humans to be seen, that entice the unwary traveller.

Beware when you are on your own. Read the Signs on beaches. Never swim at night, and never swim alone. Don’t go up close to wild animals, and never ever feed wild animals.

Danger in the water

Some people are afraid of sharks, although the prospect of being attacked by a shark is only slightly more probable than a meteorite falling on your head. Unless you disguise yourself as a seal by zipping up in a wetsuit and bravely hurl yourself into a seal pack in waters known as shark feeding routes, you’re not going to end up taken by a shark. Read the signs on the beaches.

There is another reason for the signs on the beaches. Jellyfish. Little blobs of jelly which eject poison-tipped darts that can kill a child or give you a heart attack. The sign to your right warns of Box Jellyfish.

Another creature to avoid in coastal waters is the beautiful, but lethal, blue-ringed octopus. If you spot one in a tidal pool, admire such delicate elegance from afar, don’t pick it up. Likewise, if you see a stingray, keep your distance.