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5 crazy whale shark facts

We wonder if the humble whale shark knows he’s the pinnacle of nature-related facebook selfies. Humans get a kick out of going whale, dolphin and turtle spotting, but is it that one-sided? Who’s to say that dolphins don’t get together one morning and say, “hey, wanna swim up the East Ridge and find some human-boats to go check out? I saw a really fat/ginger/loud male the other day lean so far over the railing, it nearly fell in. It was hilarious!”

As part of our recent project for STA Travel and Tourism Western Australia, we drove up the continent’s West Coast from Perth to Broome, marvelling at the many unique and stunning features of this part of the world. You can read a full lowdown in our blog post on STA Travel’s website, but we were so blown away by two of the experiences, we couldn’t help but delve further into telling you all about it. One was Karijini National Park, and the other involved some serious getting our snorkel on.

Being in the presence of the world’s biggest fish it so jaw-droppingly amazing that you’re going to have to slam it on your bucket list instead of bungee jumping. No trips planned for the near future? Don’t fret, as the crazy facts that surround this giant blue spotted grazer are pretty damn amazing too. So get ready to have a little taster of the whale sharks awesomeness right here, right now sat staring at your laptop in dreary Clapham.

1) Whale sharks are the kings and queens of mystery

Despite being the largest fish in the ocean, they’re pretty elusive. No one knows how many exist, little is known about their social behaviour and body stats differ from post to post. Nevertheless, most agree that there is good reason to believe that sizes and weight aren’t the biggest and heaviest we’ve seen yet. As they’re pretty harmless, whale sharks tactic when faced with a threat is to dive (more than 1km deep), which is why we had to painfully constrain ourselves from free diving in WA so as to not lose the whale shark and p*ss everyone else on the boat off. If you’ve seen pics of people swimming underwater (as opposed to on the surface) with a whale shark, they were probably taken in South East Asia, which has less stringent animal protection regulations.

2) Just in case you’re confused

Whale sharks aren’t whales but sharks. You probably already knew that, but want to know a nifty way of telling why? Sharks breathe through gills, and their tail fin is upright (vertical) as they swim straight through the water, moving their bodies from side to side to keep moving. Whale sharks come to the surface for food, not air. Whales, on the other hand, are mammals evolved from land creatures and thus have a very different anatomical blueprint (for one, mammaly bones in stead of sharky cartilage). Their tail fins have evolved in the horizontal plane, which is also handy for swimming up for air and down for food, fun and other whale-related shenanigans. Ta-daaa, pub quiz won.

3) Dinner time is more epic than YouTube

To feed a body length of up to 12 metres (possibly even bigger) weighing 15000kg (that’s 15 tonnes) you’re gonna have to stuff a lot of food down your pie-hole. Whale sharks feed on plankton (very deceptive), which you also might have known already. Studies of a 6m juvenile shark off Yukatan show that he ate for about 8 hours a day, filtering 600 cubic meters of seawater per hour for 2.8kg of food, which equates to 21kg of yummy plankton goodness every day. Whale sharks are so fond of plankton, that they’ve managed to figure out exactly when and where fish and coral are spawning on a global scale, and move around the oceans accordingly. Just imagine the family food budget. Which brings us to…

4) No one’s figured out their birds and bees story yet

If you’re a young, frisky whale shark who’s got a bit of spare time on your hands/fins, you’re gonna have to start a stamp collection, cause as of yet, there isn’t any whale shark porn. Not that the species are particularly prude, but no one has managed to find out where, when and how they mate. BUT, in 1997 scientists found female sharks carrying more than 300 pups that are born live at different times. Whale sharks only reach frisky maturity in their 30s but living up to 100 years old means lots of babies to fight about Haribo in the checkout queue with.

5) If you want to find a specific whale shark on tinder…

… all you need to do is take a photo of its spots, and send it to these dudes who’ll tell you all about it. If you’ve found a brand new one they haven’t got on file yet, you can name it!

Despite the fact we only had a combined 10 minutes bobbing around the surface in small groups whilst Mr/Mrs (we couldn’t dive to find out) Whale Shark swam by indifferently, being in the presence of this magnificent and stunningly beautiful fish was incredible. There are several places worldwide that offer snorkelling tours when it’s the right season for spotting them, and we can’t recommend it enough.

Had your mind blown by being in the presence of a wild creature? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll be sure to add it to our list! And whilst you’re on the internet, check out our Western Australia Film!

Chased by uniforms – Perth’s artistic underbelly

All, Inspire

Guest blog post by the wonderful Tracy Brown.

Chased by uniformed, badge wearing officers by torchlight… down dark alleys and laneways and out onto the night streets of cities… lugging a bag of spray cans and concealing your identity with a balaclava…. The traditional life of a street artist is not generally seen as glamorous. I mean, ok perhaps Banksy makes it work… just look at him… oh no, that’s right, you can’t… And why? Because he knows he would be in deep shit if anyone ever saw him. That’s the problem with tagging your art, they catch you red handed at one wall, they can track your little trail all over town. But I doubt he’s ever been fined, and probably never will be. Why? Because people LIKE IT. We like art, we like our walls exploding with colour and creative political statements that drive a message home, and nowhere have we seen more love for street art than Perth in WA.

Western Australia got the message a while back, their youth were leaving – in droves. Perth as a city was renowned for cultivating brilliant minds, but suffered a mass exodus once the university degree was in the travel pouch. They were sending budding entrepreneurs with innovative ideas into the waiting arms of other states and bigger cities, where they also found street culture and vibrant communities. Perth said “We want you back!” and the crew at FORM, stepped up. PUBLIC was born, and communities rejoiced!

You can position yourself in Perth city’s Wolf Lane and observe travellers mouths drop. They will stand transfixed by the mind-boggling amount of hours, litres of paint (ahh .. this year alone that would be an easy 4,245 litres, plus a lazy 2,406 aerosol cans), creative genius and pure vision it would have taken to create such inspirational work. As you traverse the city and regional areas throughout the state, you will see Giant Octopuses (hey, what’s the correct plural for an eight legged sea creature… I should really look that up), towering Big Bad Wolves and teeny tiny mice murals, and colour – SO MUCH COLOUR!

60 artists took part in the creation of 70 walls this year, and international street artists are clambering to get a spot on the next round in 2016. Competition is fierce. People are talking, and the youth are not so keen to leave a progressive, culturally aware and inclusive region. A place where their contributions are valued and they feel part of their community. Creative spaces breed positive mindsets, the energy attracts young travelers who feel welcome in a city that embraces art and culture.

Does the “legal” street artist feel as though they can still be taken seriously if what they are creating is sanctioned and **GASP – PAID FOR? Nope, not a typo – PAID, with real-to-goodness CASH. Yes, unsurprisingly, yes they do. Local businesses (as in Penang – check out the Rat & Dragon frontline report) are claiming economic growth from increased foot traffic and trendy coffee shops and eateries are sprouting next to Grasshoppers the size of Godzilla. Bland alleyways have become friendlier places for pedestrians. Professionally designed artwork gives a desirable ambience where once you would be afraid to set foot. Working alongside local councils also ensures that relationships between artists, businesses and the general community are fostered in a direction that benefits everyone involved.

Breaking free of the city, just an hour and a half outside of Perth, you will see what the community of Northam has decided is it’s best attraction. PUBLIC’s largest murals for 2015 by PHLEGM & HENSE.. 36 wheat silos covered in paint by the world’s best.

(Film by Peacock Visuals, with kind permission of Form)

Hense: “Painting the grain silos in Northam, Australia was amazing. I’d say it’s one of the most interesting structures and projects I’ve worked on thus far.”

From the world’s first collaborative, legal murals on the remains of the Berlin Wall in 1989, people have collectively seen how art brings communities together. It fosters hope, ambition and spirit. Perth is bursting with youth, life and … that little something extra that you just can’t quite put your finger on. But don’t take my word for it, be inspired and come find it for yourself.

You can find out more by following FORM / PUBLIC, and go ahead, like them on facebook and twitter.

“The vibe or whatever” – what really made Western Australia unique

All, Destinations

You may have noticed we’ve just been to Western Australia. Seen STA Travel’s new film? Total eye candy. Been on Instagram lately? Selfie heaven. Read our project lowdown on STA Travel’s blog? Pure inspiration. We have had so much to write/colour leak/shout about because the project was genuinely awesome. But as we submitted our final bits of commissioned material and read through everything again, there was something missing, that we hadn’t quite had the space to put our fingers on.

As you know from our previous blog post about different types of travel – we’re a fan of all of it. Whether you’re enjoying the highlights of Europe on a 2-week party bus or hitchhiking solo to a secluded hill in East Timor, we don’t see the point of being snobbish. Everyone nowadays claims to take you where none of the other tourism service providers take you. Even day trip providers at Bangkok’s floating markets that are flooded daily with boatloads of pale, sunburnt, squinting westerners compete at sales point bragging about the fact they take you to the ‘real’ market. What? Everyone else goes to a virtual one? And shipping your 3 busses of 50 tourists (yep, I’ve said it) to the ‘secret spot’ daily keeps that spot ‘secret’ for the next day’s load?

You’re never going to get more off the beaten track (OTBT) than everyone else (locals, anyone?), unless you’re a highly trained specialized deep-sea diver in the Marianna Trench. Or an astronaut. ‘Tourist’ has become such a dirty word, just look at hundreds of inspirational quote pictures that spread like wildfire.“I’m a traveller, not a tourist”, is such a stamp of moral high ground, even crappy websites like holidify.com are using the slogan for their poorly executed ad campaign. Since when did travellers sleep exclusively in tents with one t-shirt and a stupid amount of camera equipment for shots they can’t back up cause taking a laptop makes them a tourist?

But we digress. What made Western Australia so cool was that it seemed to be blissfully unaware of this distinction between tourists and travellers and the deeply rooted judgement in to OTBT or not to OTBT. Yep, Perth had its fill of pissed up student types throwing up kebabs on historical monuments in Freo. Wannabe professional photographers stood around street art hotspot Wolf Lane, like it was some exclusive underground club, to be spotted and deemed ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’ by other wannabe professional photographers. But for some reason, the alpha-OTBT-body-language-hierarchy wasn’t as present. Maybe it’s the fact that Western Australia has been out of the mainstream’s minds that the place still has an air of collective adventure. On the road our touring mob mingled with families in campervans, shoestring backpackers hitchhiking to places that would otherwise be too expensive to get to, high-end glam packers and crusty my-grandad’s-been-comin’-here-since-he-was-6-and-so-have-I’ old-timers. Yes, we certainly had different hygiene facility expectations, but on the whole there was a refreshing absence of “ugh, look at those smelly youngsters” vs “OMG, my SOUL would DIE if I EVER signed up for a TOUR. How MAINSTREAM is THAT???”

Maybe it’s the people. WA, like Australia in general, isn’t cheap, and you can’t get away with not showering. Maybe the hardcore off-the-beaten-trackers don’t fancy places as ‘westernised’ as Oz, but want to bathe Facebook with shots from this-cute-little-third-world-country-no-one-has-ever-heard-of-before-except-me. Maybe it’s the way the ‘attractions’ are laid out – you can’t just get there in an hour on the back of a scooter and be back for your sunset yoga session. We drove more than 3000km, and that takes some dedication and a relatively comfortable means of transport, or you’d quickly get bored of being in pain. You also just have to stick to the way things are run, put up with the ‘constricting’ regulations and health & safety rules you have to follow cause this is Oz, not Java. No adventurous riding on car roofs here, but we do know a good spot in Myanmar!

We think the most defining thing for us was Western Australia’s unexpectedness. Everyone knows there’s a photo opportunity spot just above Machu Picchu, cause everyone who goes has their pic taken exactly there. Hell yeah, we totally would too, that is the point! It’s an amazing place, so why wouldn’t you want to remind yourself that you were there? When it came to WA though, all we could come up with from our pre-knowledge brains was a generic pic of Perth’s skyline, a shot of a whale shark and some endless bush. This lack of pre-chewed visual narrative was amazing, ‘cause we were surprised round every corner. We had no idea how beautiful Karijini National Park was. We had no idea that Shell Beach’s waters were so crystal clear, and whale sharks were really SO much cooler in real life. We had no idea how amazing the colours of the container ships and red rocks of Gantheaume Point in Broom contrasted with the turquoise sea and lush green vegetation. And we had this stretch of West Coast, three times the length of the UK, to explore with a completely blank slate. To take yourself where you haven’t been before through other people’s eyes is in a way of getting ‘off the beaten track’. And a place where you can do just that, in this incredibly well documented world, is really quite unique.

How we found the greatest hidden beauty of surfing

All, Learn

You can build a tennis court just about anywhere on the planet. When you finished reading this, you could probably be swatting at fuzzy green balls within a 10-minute drive from where you’re sitting right now. But you can’t build a surf break just any old place. And therein lies one of surfing’s greatest beauties. You see, even if you’re a first timer just wanting to experience surfing as something new (because you live in Dusseldorf *insert your landlocked hometown here*), you’ll need to travel even just to find out if you like surfing at all. There are some people who are lucky enough to live right on the coast. But even then, while tennis courts are the same shape and dimensions the world over, because of the raw natural features that need to come together to form waves, no two surf breaks are quite the same. Yep – if you’re gonna surf, chances are you’re gonna travel for it.

For instance, there’s a wave in Oaxaca state, Mexico, that’s so beautiful, so powerful and so improbably perfect that you have to stand there with your toes in the sand facing the mighty Pacific Ocean to believe it. Puerto Escondido is the town. Zicatela is the beach. The local drink is Mezcal (a tequila’s tangy cousin) and tuna practically leap into fishing boats, making the fresh and spicy fish tacos the greatest on the planet. Go there to surf ‘Puerto’ and you’ll probably be tempted to check out other breaks a little further up the coast. You’ll see deserts of cacti, mountains jacketed in jungle and townships of splendour, and you wont help but fall in love with the people, geography and liveliness that is Mexico.

Meanwhile, across the planet, there’s a cave on a tropical island that opens out to the Indian Ocean. You need to descend a cliff face, clutching your surfboard, to get to it. Once you’re in, you need to battle out through the swells and current to reach what is possibly the greatest left hand reef surf set-up the world has known. Welcome to the infamous Uluwatu, on Bali, Indonesia. Yeah, for sure it’s super-famous these days, but that’s the point. As a surfer, wherever you are in the world, you’ve heard the tales and you want to see it – to surf it – for yourself. On your way there, you’ll pass an enormous temple on the cliff face. Balinese will be worshiping the gods of the sea to keep themselves and their visitors safe. You’ll hear whispered superstitions – don’t wear green while surfing! It’s the sea goddess’ favourite colour, and if she spots it on you, she might just take you with her…

Everywhere you turn on Bali you’ll see statues of the fearsome and beautiful gods. People burn incense, offer food and hold processions in their honour – on mountains, on beaches and in the streets. This is the Island of the Gods, after all. Go there to surf ‘Ulus’ and explore further across Bali and the islands beyond. Don’t freak out, but you’ll get swept up by the intoxicating culture and wont come back the same…

The great deserts of North Africa empty their rasping sands into the sea, while somewhere in the frozen North Atlantic; hellish storms send massive oceanic swells thousands of miles to meet them. Go for a dawn surf at Taghazout’s cranking right hand point break and you’ll be paddling out to the soundtrack of the haunting call to prayer, blasted from tinny speakers at the top of evocatively shaped spires. Surf all day because it’s always offshore and break the fast (if you’re there at Ramadan) with the locals under a blood-red desert sunset. That evening, smash down a hearty goat tagine (traditional clay hotpot) and savour desert air flavoured with heady Moroccan spices. And hash, if you’re that way inclined.

Hit all three of these surf spots and you’ve just travelled the earth and seen some incredibly diverse places and cultures. You might even be able to have a quick chat in Spanish, Bahasa or Arabic these days. And the most thrilling part? Well there are thousands more incredible experiences out there in almost all the countries that fringe our planet’s oceans. One of the purest and most wondrous pleasures of surfing – for your Rat & Dragon crew – is looking back at the shore from the lineup and seeing a new and exotic skyline across the water that you could never have imagined. Is it Brazilian rainforest mountains as you surf Ilha Grande? Are there onion-dome mosque roofs and pointy minarets as in Morroco? Castles on the cliff-faces in northern Spain? Swaying coconut tree crowns in the Philipines? The bright lights of Sydney off Bondi Beach? The multi pointed pagodas off Bali?

Don’t get us wrong. We don’t have anything against tennis (or Dusseldorf) but a dedication to surfing – even just trying it in the first place – comes with a taste of the whole lifestyle it’s wrapped up in. The desire to surf provides the initial impetus, but what happens along the way is nothing short of high adventure. Surfing may be the drug, but travel, worldly knowledge and adventure are the side effects. It’s a sport that comes with a lot of baggage. You should get yours packed soon. And when you do, tell us what the skyline looks like from your next surf.

More than just gaining a visa

All, Learn

Kindergarten, Primary School, pass the tests and get into a good Grammer School. Study hard. Don’t be too much of a teenager, this is the rest of your life you have in your own hands right now. Don’t mess it up. Go live abroad for a year with a previously unknown family. Social, cultural, educational uprooting to grow more roots and expand as a person. Apply to uni. Work your butt off to get the grades you need to have a chance at being accepted at the unit at top of your list. Move to another different country; learn a whole new education system whilst studying three different subjects at the same time. Move abroad again to grow even more social and intellectual roots by pulling yourself out of everything you know. Learn another language, culture, get a whole new set of friends, family, authoritarian figures, work colleagues and surf mates. And a final chance to make your degree count by working your ass off again to get the best possible grade you could attain. This is your future life you’re defining.

Get a proper job in a real company that pays you via bank transfer, so you know that it’s serious. Spend the longest hours in a windowless post-production office; constantly up against first priority deadlines so you never even get to second priority stuff. Work your ass of so your volatile boss doesn’t fire you. This job is awesome and you’re so lucky to have it. Work through another weekend. Decide to switch into a different field. Work with international clients, across all timezones. Follow your dream or miss out in life. Start up your own company. And you know what they say about that. You’re never off work if your company is you and you are your own boss and drill sergeant.

And the driving force in this whole shebang? Roughly 150g of grey jelly. It sounds like a bit of a marathon, this thing called modern life, especially if you’re from a first world country, go through a standard education system, manage to get into higher education and get an office based job to kickstart your office career that will determine the rest of your life. This is by no means a rant, but an appreciation of how much that little lump of grey jelly is capable of. Because, apart from the practicalities of every day life, everything above, everything so many people go through in one way or another, can be achieved whilst living a wheelchair bound life. Focus is so much on cerebral work, where the body becomes a vessel for the brain, and our surroundings are adapted so much for this vessel to be able to transport the brain around without having to deal with things itself. Climate controlled commuting and shopping, takeaway lunches and dinners so you don’t even need to stretch your legs but can eat at your desk, head still buried further in your computer. God forbid you’d get dirt under your fingernails (those most primal tools nature invented for us). If it weren’t for the craze of going to the gym (again a very controlled environment), you would get so lost in your thoughts that you’d never even contemplate giving your body something to do.

Recent events however have taken me straight out of my brain-focussed world. My first year’s visa in Australia had been taken up by so much travel and work abroad that I felt I’d hardly seen the day-to-day Oz I had come here to explore, so it was time to find a way to extend. And Australia has a rather unique solution for all sorts of issues. If you want to extend your working holiday visa, you can’t just pay. You have to give the country something it has a real shortage of: for 88 days, you have to fill the gaps in the workforce that are hard to fill. And don’t’ be fooled into thinking it’s cleaning toilets in the big city. For the options that living in the big city offers, there are enough people willing to clean already. You have to work in a rural area, away from the big lights, and in an field that’s most in need of manpower: agriculture, landscaping, construction and mining.

“That’s a disgrace” I hear all you cerebral workers shout out. “My Timmy shouldn’t be forced to get his kneed scraped up in some iron ore pit.” “My Emily will ruin her beautiful English complexion picking pineapples in the Ozone hole death ray zone that is the Australian summer.” Well, whilst you might be right, Timmy probably got those scrapes when he fell of the back of a scooter in Koh Tao after a hefty day of buckets. And as for Emily, she’s been tanning ever since she entered an area of Oz that was above 15 °C. And in a way, it’s one of the fairest systems around, as not money but dedication to a non-glamorous task dictates who gets to stay. In comparison to other countries that don’t allow you to stay longer, in Oz, if you really want it, you have the option to make it happen.

Not saying it’s by any means easy. Days are long and physical work is hard, and often tedious and mind-numbingly boring. You’re far from everyone else, from anything to do and anywhere to go. This does mean though that you save money like a champion and for once in your otherwise over-stimulated life have the time to bond with the other unfortunate backpackers around you. This can go well or not so well, depending on the group you’re with, but many a good friendship has grown over bonding in the face of adversity. Exploitation of inexperienced, young workers has also been a feature in recent news, but the government is taking steps to make sure people get paid by recently outlawing work on a volunteer basis. There are bad eggs, no doubt, but that doesn’t discount the basic logic behind the scheme.

One thing that working for your 2^nd year working holiday visa does without a doubt is make you do things and live places you would usually never dream of doing or living in. It forces you out of your comfort zone, out of your idea of what’s a minimum acceptable living standard for yourself. “What? You want me to stick my hand up that cow’s butt?” “Yes, cause otherwise it will get sick and might die.” No more worries about breaking a fingernail as I carry around thick planks of freshly chain sawed wood to make some benches for the river camp. Swapping mum & dad’s gentrified suburbia to live in a converted shipping container in the outback is suddenly not as bad as it sounded. You can even have a bath in the bathtub under the stars, so long as you hand fill it with water from the fire. And all the splinters and blisters were worth learning how to drive the 4×4 troop carrier off-road through sand sinkholes without getting stuck. Why didn’t I drive on the road? Cause we had to shovel out the gravel to build it first. Where else in my previously purely cerebral life would I have had the change to scale a tipi, chop down a tree, build a shed in a swamp, learn some basic joining and rusty engine mechanics, dig out trenches and appreciate the work that goes into shovelling 500kg of gravel in the Ozone hole death ray zone that is Red Rock in February.

Working in construction certainly made me appreciate my own brother’s endurance as a trained carpenter, and how we have lived side by side for nearly our entire life, but have never really had the chance to step into each others professional shoes for a while. And as from my friends who did farming, despite all the boredom, they have the best stories to tell of that one day they rescued a calf from a ravine or stayed up all night helping one of the camp’s sheep have lambs or proudly worked out how to pick blueberries around the huge red back spider webs without getting hospitalized.

Working for your second year visa is a pain in the ass, but it is also a unique opportunity to really step out of your comfort zone and do something you’d otherwise never chose to do, or have the chance to do. To learn to appreciate the work that goes into often undervalued non-cerebral work, and re-connect with how the vast majority of the human race lived every day before big cities and offices started sprouting up everywhere. And who knows, I’m tempted to head back for another stint after our next assignment. I’ve found that physically building something brings its own satisfaction, and I plan to build this into my previously cerebral-heavy life, to give my legs a stretch and clear my head more often.

Are You a Seafood Snob (or Just a Bit Squeamish)?

All, Learn

Don’t be a pussy. You might be really missing out, you know. As we’ve journeyed across the world and delved deep into the local culture, we’ve encountered all sorts of incredible foods we previously didn’t even know could be eaten at all. And when it comes to seafood, we’ve discovered that people generally fall into one of four main schools of thought, and that these are often interestingly divided along geographical lines. Which one do you swim in?

“I don’t eat fish.”

Not counting people genuinely (and tragically) allergic to seafood, what you really mean is “I’m scared of anything that has evolved to live in the substance that covers 70% of the earth’s surface and, in fact, makes up about that much of my own body too. Never mind oysters – you’re probably just not the adventurous type when it comes to food at all. And you’re really missing out.

“I only eat white fish. As long as it’s not too fishy.”

Um, ok… Let’s just for a moment ignore the fact that fish is, by definition, fishy. You probably don’t mind fish and chips, but don’t venture much beyond this. Scared about the bones, maybe? It’s a pity, because there’s some wonderful stuff out there that is too small to fillet, or of a shape, size and texture not conducive to being sliced into perfect, white rectangles. And some of it might just blow your mind if you can bring yourself to live a little and try it…

“I love seafood (but only the expensive stuff)”

You probably quite like the taste of a variety of seafood. I mean, a fish fillet with a nice sauce from that fashionable new celeb chef café/bistro and, while it might creep you out a little bit, certainly lobster too, right? You might even go for oysters and prawns too. Salty, creamy, fishy and 100% delish, of course. But hang on… You’re not big on sardines or smoked kippers. Octopus? Nah. And would you really attempt a two-dollar tilapia from a Thai street vendor (even if it was grilled whole to perfection with tantalising spices)? Wait a moment… you don’t really like seafood at all, do you..? Oh dear, you’re just suffering through the caviar for the prestige… You’re not a seafood snob, are you?

“If it stays still long enough, I’ll eat it, especially if it has tentacles or spikes and even if it looks like snot, a tongue, or genitals. And sometimes, even if it’s not still at all but splashing, swimming, wriggling or squirming, it’s still dinner!”

You really have to go to Japan. Oh, wait – you’re from Japan, of course.

So you’ve probably r犀利士5mg
ealised by now that we’re being a bit silly. Palates are as diverse as the people on planet Earth and we’re not two to judge. We do, however, love our seafood and we’ve encountered an astounding variety of it on our travels. From the hugest of yellow-fin tuna caught that morning and displayed hanging from a tree by the side of the road in Kupang, Indonesia, to the tiniest, snail-like winkles expertly plucked from the mangroves by our indigenous guide in far north Queensland, Australia, to creamy caviar in deepest Siberia to the highly poisonous, but inexplicably popular fugu (or puffer fish) in Niigata, Japan.

All of it has been thrilling to taste and funnily enough, most of it has been delicious. The mangrove winkles were sweet, salty and succulent (pick the black ones with the white rims, by the way. The brown/olive ones are a bit bitter). Raw puffer fish is delicate and subtle. And we would never have known without having been there on the street in Kupang or ducking our heads into a sushi restaurant in Tokyo or squelching our toes in the mud in far north Queensland.

We came, we saw, we tasted, and we discovered something new, something delightful – new experiences to be savoured, and some new favourite flavours that we know to seek out next time. So don’t be scared. Even if it looks entirely unlike any food (or creature) you’ve ever seen before, as long as it’s a local’s thing (and it’s sanitary of course), give it a try. Don’t let your preconceptions stop you from your new adventures. You might be wonderfully surprised by what the world has on it’s dinner plate. After all, that’s the very quintessence of travel, boiled down like a lobster bisque. Drink it all in and let us know what seafood you discover.

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