I've gone Down Under!

Hi Sea Fans!

My latest update is from...da dada daaaaa....AUSTRALIA!!

I recently spent some time in Queenscliff (which is in Victoria at the bottom of Australia) at the Marine and Freshwater Discovery Centre, which is an educational marine/freshwater aquarium, where I got to check out an iconic Australian freshwater fish that can grow to over 1.5 metres in length ... the Murray Cod.  

This fish was definitely eyeballing me! : )

Thanks to Julie Murphy, my host, I got to spend time at the facility doing a variety of things.  I helped the volunteers;

Searching for plankton under the microscope.

I checked out some bones (It was fascinating to see a dolphin skeleton again, I haven’t seen one of those since I volunteered at one of the local museums!  I used to have to help keep all the skeleton information in order for future research);

and, following my visit to the education centre, I was lucky enough to be invited to spend a day in their research facility next door. The most fun was working with fish otoliths.  Do you know what those are?  Fish ear bones!  They’re used to age a fish...like a tree, you can count the rings on an otolith and find out how old a fish is.  

We used a diamond saw to cut the otoliths very, very thinly!

Looking at the otoliths under the microscope made me realise, once again, how amazing fish are...actually, all animals... because they're made up of so many complicated little things that seem so simple, but without every little one, the animal can't function.

I also spent some time in the chemistry lab doing nutrient testing on seawater samples.

Me behind the equipment that was analysing a seawater sample from a sewage outlet.

It's been so much fun checking out how the Aussies do it! :) Thanks Julie and the MFDC crew, it was great to meet you.

There's more to come Sea Fans, so keep an eye on  this blog for more on the work done in Australia.

Have a great week.

Cheers!

Abby

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San Diego star

Hi Sea Fans!

I wasn't in the papers or on TV (yet) in San Diego, but I visited Keli (the illustrator of my books) and she and I went aquarium visiting.  Check out this YOUTube video:

http://youtu.be/esdr870orwY

Have a great week Sea fans!!

Cheers

Abby

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Otterly confused

Hi Sea Fans!

I've been travelling for over a year now and I've met some amazing people who love what they do and the animals they care for but I must tell you, home is a great place.  When I call my friends in South Africa there's always an interesting animal story to be told.  Where else do you find baboon troups wandering the streets like gangsters, Vervet monkeys stealing food from kitchens, hippos pitching up at your back door (given, this was at a friend's house who works for Nature Conservation), traffic jams caused by whales and Dassies (a Rock Hyrax) eating your lunch?!  And the latest story is that an otter walked into a restaurant in Cape Town.  Man, they must have been serving really fresh "Catch of the Day"!

The otterly confused restaurant patron. (Photo from the Divesite website).

Apparently, the otter walked straight through the front door!!  Not only did it make a high profile entrance, but it walked straight over the cocktail waitress's feet and went and hid under a cupboard....leaving it's tail sticking out for everyone to see.  I don't think this otter knows how Hide and Seek works. : )

Anyway, after causing a bit of chaos amongst the staff, the local retired harbour master was called in to help catch the "guest" but his attempts ended up with a chunk bitten out of a broom.

Yum, yum, a broom!  

The SPCA were eventually called in to help and they managed to catch the confused otter and set it free in the nearby wetlands so that it could hook up with its mate again.  (They reckon it was one of the local breeding pair).

So never a dull day in SA!

I'll be posting more travel pics soon, Sea Fans so keep your eyes peeled.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Abby }(*)8

20+ Cheap Aquarium Crafts for the Holidays

Hi Sea Fans!

Happy New Year and I hope you all had a very merry Christmas!  What better way to enjoy the holidays than to get crafty.  Here are some more ideas I found on the Internet (I have quite a bit of time on my hands when I'm traveling between countries) to get your creative juices flowing:

There are so many things you can do with styrofoam cups, Google it or check out Pinterest and you'll see!

Styrofoam or pot plant shark.

 Paper plates are another item with which you can make lots of different crafts.

Paper plate whale.

 Hand prints and foot prints can also be made into all sorts of animals with some wiggly eyes and pipe cleaners...maybe even glitter and buttons!  The options are endless as long as you think outside of the box!!

Hand print crab.

 Toilet roll and paper towel roll insides can be made into anything!  This otter is a great example of this.

Toilet roll otter.

  Popsicle sticks can be used to make animals and then you can build an aquarium for the fish rather than using a shoe box.

Popsicle stick fish.

 Egg cartons are always fun.  Crabs, turtles, jellyfish, clams, puffer fish...whatever your heart desires!

Egg carton crab.

Marbleized art can be cut up to make these funky fish.  Using different blues and white, a background of sea with ripples and waves can also be made.  A starfish and funky seashell shapes would look nice with this too.

Marbleized art fish.

 Another styrofoam cup:

Styrofoam cup or pot plant whale.

 Simple, plain cardboard can also be made into animals:

Cardboard octopus.

 I love this seahorse made from glass picked up on the beach.  You might need Mom or Dad to help you with the wire and pliers.

Sea glass seahorse.

 I wasn't sure what these were but I liked the idea of filling them with sand, a rock or beans and making them into doorstops or microwave heat pads for winter.

Whale doorstop.

 Bottle tops are something we all have plenty of so why not recycle them into something cute?!

Bottle cap turtle.

 Recycle soap bottles or any other bottles you have and make some penguins...or fish.

Soap bottle penguins.

 More paper plates:

Paper plate crabs.

 And more...

Paper plate fish.

 Bowls can be recycled too:

Styrofoam bowl and peg crab.

 Bubble wrap printing makes cool scales!

Bubble wrap painting.

 Another cup:

Styrofoam cup or pot plant crab.

 Buttons also make really cool scales and moms generally have quite a few random buttons lying around.

Button art fish.

So go wild and have fun Sea Fans!
Chat soon.
Cheers!
Abby
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Aquarium Christmas!

Hi Sea Fans!

Once again, many of the aquariums around the world got into the festive spirit and had Christmas-themed goings on at their facility.  Here are some of what happened this year:

The Deep (England)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGVvgdDaM0Y&feature=youtu.be

Maritime Aquarium (Norwalk CT, USA)

Florida Aquarium (USA)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gSKQGNivYs


Two Oceans Aquarium (Cape Town, South Africa)

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas!

Chat soon
Cheers!
Abby
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Mexico II

Hi Sea Fans!

I spent quite a bit of time in Mexico so I still need to tell you more.  If you remember, Paty was my host at the Veracruz Aquarium and she made sure that I got to have an action-packed visit.

After seeing the sharks, jellies and marine fish, I got to meet the vet, Alejandro, and spend the day with the baby boas (snakes).

I also got to spend time in the Rainforest Gallery where I had my photo taken with Toto the green macaw and his friends the toucans (I love those birds, they're soooooooo pretty!).

Veracruz is a perfect example of the variety of animals that an aquarist can get to work with.  It's not just the animals under the water, but those that live above the water too.  Modern aquariums and zoos prefer to show ecosystems (all the living things that live together in one area) rather than just one single species (type of animal) in an exhibit because it's more natural that way.

To end this fun day, I went to see Miguel in the water quality lab.

This is one of the most important places in an aquarium because all the animals depend on clean water for their health.  Dirty water and low oxygen water is not something we want in an aquarium so someone needs to check the water every day.

I helped Miguel write down all the data from the water tests, ready to input onto the computer data sheets.

On my second last day, I got to spend some time with the teens from a local high school who visited the Education Department.  Boy did we have fun!

 

I made lots of new friends!

 The aquarium celebrated its 20th anniversary on this day and guess what...I got the honour of eating the first piece of anniversary cake!  YUMMY!!  : )

My last day was the most amazing, it was the day a baby manatee was born!  It was the fourth baby manatee to be born there.  The Veracruz Aquarium was the first centre in Mexico to have baby manatees born in captivity so this was even more special.

Baby and mommy - baby was not even a day old!

A close up of the baby with his mom, Silvia.

Thanks Paty and thanks Veracruz Aquarium for your hospitality!  I loved my stay and am so glad I can share it with the kids of the world.

My friends at Veracruz Aquarium.

So if you're planning a holiday to Mexico, see if you can visit my friends at Veracruz.

Have a great weekend Sea Fans.
Cheers!
Abby
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Mexico!!

Hi Sea Fans!

I have been so privileged, but I won't spoil the surprise, I'll tell you all about my visit from the beginning...

Paty Estrada from Acuario de Veracruz the aquarium in Veracruz, Mexico, invited me to visit and boy am I glad I went!!  My week there was jam-packed full of fun things:

I was straight away introduced to the Director, C.P. Armando Fernández R., what a nice man.  

He told me all about the history of the aquarium from before the opening in 1992 up to this year.  If you'd like to know more, check out their website at http://www.acuariodeveracruz.com/history.html

Veracruz Aquarium has fresh water as well as sea water exhibits, they've got dolphins, manatees, sharks, jellyfish and lots, lots more. You can read all about these on their website so I'll rather tell you about what I got to do!  Paty got me a pass to go behind the scenes so that I could join the staff in their day to day work.  The first stop was a marine turtle that had swallowed a hook - poor thing!

It's all in a day's work for aquarists!  Working at an aquarium doesn't just mean that you feed the fish on display, it also means looking after any animals that are brought in from outside that need help like this turtle.

After that, I got to sit up top and watch the nurse shark feed.

They make sure that their hands don't get mistaken for food by using a feeding stick.

Ramon, one of the aquarists, took me behind the scenes while he fed the fresh water exhibits.

He let me feed them too - once I'd washed my hands of course!

Antonio told me about the invasive Lionfish when I went behind the scenes of the salt water exhibits with him.  I also met their Green Moray and fed some of the fish there too.

The jellyfish culture lab is always interesting because that is where you get to see how jellyfish multiply and you get to see how they change as they grow. Claudio was my tour guide here.

Here you can see how the jellies start off looking like a tree (called a polyp).  A whole lot of the jellyfish shape that we know grow and pile up on top of the tree before they eventually swim free.

Checking out the polyps in a beaker.

Jellies, jellies and more jellies!

More containers with polyps.  The sheet inside the container is there for the polyps to attach to.

 I think that's it for today Sea Fans.  Keep an eye out for the rest of my Mexican adventure in the next blog.
Have a great week and enjoy the lead up to Christmas.

Cheers
Abby
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