Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Milford Discovery Centre

As part of our trip to Milford Sound, we were talked into paying an extra chunk of cash to visit Milford Discovery Centre. This is a floating platform in the water which extends 10m below the surface of the sea with a viewing platform on the lowest level. Tourists like us can thus get to see the local aquatic sealife up close.


The most impressive of this was, apparently, the black coral:


Our guide was quick to explain why it is called black coral despite its white appearance: it apparently only appears black when dead. This must have been an embarassment to the guy who first studied a dead piece of coral and then named the stuff.

Here is a fish enjoying the black coral almost as much as us:


After heading back to the surface, the boat came to pick us up and take us back to the vistor center at the head of the fjord.

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