Trochus Hatchery

sunrise through the trees

clam

 

pencil sea urchin

pencil sea urchin

barramundi right before they gobbled the fish

barramundi

 

barramundi cod

coral

 

giant clam

sea cucumber

sea star

Daniel and a trochus shell (and creature inside)

moon coming up

Our last day on the peninsula today, and as usual it was pretty relaxed. We went to the tour at the Trochus hatchery this morning up at One Arm Point which is an indigenous run business. The idea is to raise trochus shells from when they’re a speck ‘til when they’re 1 or 2 centimetres tall, which is when they place them out on the reef off shore, then when they’re about 5 or more centimetres they harvest them, cook them on fire, tap out the snail-type creature then there’s 3 stages of cleaning, grinding and polishing. The powder that comes off the first two stages is toxic so they do them under water, then they do a final polish of the mother of pearl, and cut out buttons from the shells to sell to fashion houses in Italy. Most of what you can see at the hatchery is actually just tanks of different fish and sea creatures to show you what’s native to the area, but the kids enjoyed seeing them feed the different fish and turtles. We also saw a turtle from a nearby lookout, and the guide said that they regularly hunt turtles still for meat. We had an early sandwich by the beach but it was too windy to swim so we just came and hung out by the tents for the afternoon where the kids could play in the trees and we could shelter from the sun and play scrabble. Tomorrow we’re all heading back to Broome, us probably for a week and the Ralhs for 2 nights before they hit the Kimberley.