I spent a couple of days in the city of East London, 300 kilometers east of Port Elizabeth, the other day. I didn’t have much free time, but I did get to visit the East London Aquarium.
The East London Aquarium is by no means a very big facility. It was officially opened on 2 December 1931 which makes it the oldest public aquarium in Southern Africa. The aquarium has a number of large fish tank displays that feature most of the fish population found in the oceans around East London.
Outside the aquarium is a huge deck overlooking the ocean for visitors to keep an eye out for whales. The deck also overlooks the seal pool where the resident seal does displays a couple of times a day.
There is also a number of African penguins at the aquarium. Just this week there was an interesting article in the newspaper regarding the penguins. Two of the penguins starting building a nest together and sitting on it, but no egg was forthcoming. As you can’t differentiate between male and female penguins, they had blood tests done on them and it turned out that they were both male penguins. The staff provided them with an egg from a “donor” female and guess what… they hatched it. Does this mean that you actually get gay penguins as well? Very interesting.
WOW 1931! Fantastic the foresight it took to create that! Seals alwayssss show such admiration for the sun! the phrase Basking in the sun? created by a seal LOLOL =0)
Had me going there for a minute…thought you had traveled to England :o)I really enjoy learning about your area through your posts…very interesting! What a beautiful story about the penguins! Love in any form is always beautiful. When it came out I watched the “March of the Penguins” a documentary on Emperor Penguins. It tells of their tribulations to hatch a single egg each year and how they partner together to see it through in the harsh environment of Antartica…simply beautiful and somewhat sad too. I often think of them and how that whole process is going on while we're all toiling away at our lives.Thanks for another interesting post!
Love the gay penquin story!!
Nice post about the aquarium Jonker. Grand Canyon had two female Condors that set up house keeping. Unfortunately no egg.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
Great Post…..I found your site on stumbleupon and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!Thanks for sharing….