Australia: Tin Can Dolphins

Tin Can Bay was off the radar for us until David came back one day and related to us about this place where we can actually feed wild dolphins for free! only drawback is, the place is about 3 hours drive away... and we actually should be there before 8am in the morning!... after mulling it over for a few minutes we thought it would be pretty much worth it to drive over since I can drive over in Oz also so there's a backup driver if needs be...

Route to Tin Can Bay

Tin Can Bay is located along the Fraser Coast in Queensland, up north from Brisbane. So we hit off at abt 445am in the morning... the drive up there is pretty, catching the sunrise and superb landscape scenery along the way... upon reaching Tin can Bay we took sometime to locate the place and there was a small crowd gathered there already... which means the dolphins was there!

Tin Can Bay Dolphin Centre

The 2 dolphins, Mystique and Patch...

According to news and the story that was related by the operators, the whole phenomenon started of about 30 years back when they found Mystique's mum called "Scarry" pretty much injured and beat up, so they sort of nursed it to health and ever since then it's been coming over... "scarry" hasn't been since around here since 2003, but ever since then her offspring "Mystique" has been coming over and recently with his girlfriend "Patch"...

Mystique and Patch, feeding time...

Patch (dolphin on the left) and Mystique (dolphin on the right)

From far it's a little difficult to distinguish both dolphins from each other, but upon closer inspection, you can see there's much more wounds and injury marks on Mystique's body. Being the alpha male of the pod of 5, there are territorial battles, and predator attacks that he has to endure. Looking at the dorsal fins and the tails you can see chunks of it taken out, and according to the operators there, it was due to a bull shark attack one of the fisherman's over there witnessed about 2 years back. Besides that, there's a lot of deep scratches all around the body and quite a notable scar on his blowhole...

Patch... quite clear and smooth lines around...

Mystique and his battle scars...

Patch showing off her belly...

Being the Malaysian jakun... even before we were allowed to feed the dolphins I stepped into the river estuary with some others... and found out why only a few ppl are in the waters then... it was really COLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD. You really won't feel it much until you actually step out and my legs really went numb. We had to step out of the waters to get our hands cleaned with sanitized water and to collect the fish to be fed to the dolphins.

Feeding the dolphins with some fishy snacks..

Pelicans wanting a piece of the pie!

Feeding the dolphins...

Another sight to behold... the pelicans there are the biggest I've seen. They're really huge and scary. The adult one's are bigger and taller than my niece... and I actually saw a pelican nearly biting a kid... maybe it was something the kid was holding... but u can bet the kid freaked out and started crying his lungs out... :P

Am I Big or really big?

Pelicans dancing to the master... :P

Breakfast at Barnacles Cafe @ Tin Can Bay Dolphin Centre

It was a pretty and pleasant experience. Coming up close and personal with wild dolphins, I definitely recommend this to anyone of you that's heading to Brisbane!