Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place & home

Posts tagged ‘New Zealand fur-seal’

New Zealand fur seal, seal pup, Admirals Arch, Cape du Couedic, Flinders Chase National Park, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, Australia, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: RTW10, thirty-three

10 years ago, I began an around-the-world (RTW) journey lasting 389 consecutive days, from 24 December 2011 to 15 January 2013 inclusive.

25 August 2012.

We’ve hopped on a ferry from mainland South Australia to Kangaroo Island. In the island’s southwest corner is an arch-shaped formation called Admiral’s Arch; from here, it’s over 3000 kilometres of open water to the Antarctic coast. Although rocks here are pounded by wave-action from the waters of the South Pacific, New Zealand fur seals and their pups are present in an out-of-bounds area set aside as a safe breeding area. This is where long-glass (zoom-lens) is handy, but from a very safe distance.

I made the image on 25 Aug 2012 with a Canon EOS450D (Rebel XSi) and these settings: 1/160-sec, f/5.6, ISO100, and 300mm focal length (480mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-mkR.

Kangaroo Island (SA): seals, koalas, & roos

Devastating bushfires in the 2020 Australian summer (December 2019-March 2020) wiped out a significant fraction of flora and fauna on Kangaroo Island. For many plant and animal species, recovery will require years to decades.

Kangaroo Island in South Australia was named for the large number of kangaroos, which were a source of fresh meat for the crew of the British ship HMS Investigator in 1802. The ship was captained by Matthew Flinders, who was tasked to chart the southern Australian coastline. Desperate without fresh supplies for months, Flinders named the island in gratitude for the abundance of roo meat.

Then again, the indigenous name for the island is “Karta” or “Island of the Dead.” That’s a little sinister, as something must have happened; either the aborigine population left the island or they died out.

But life bounces back, and there’s plenty of it on this island.

There are plenty of sheep where on grassy meadows, seals at Kingscote Jetty, young and adult seals relaxing and sleeping in the sun at Admirals Arch, free-climbing koala bears and free-roaming kangaroos at the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, Ligurian honey bees at Clifford’s Honey Farm, and a lone echidna by the side of a dirt road in the middle of the island.

In making these photos, I used my long-zoom lens; no animals were harmed, poked, prodded, or ridiculed in the process.

( Click here for images and more )

%d bloggers like this: