Jurgen and Stella Freund’s Weblog

Sometime 1999 to 2002, we used to run whale shark tours in Donsol, Philippines one month every year for 4 years during whale shark peak season. We witnessed this town’s progress from being sleepy, forgotten and provincial to becoming THE place with the “Best Animal Encounter in Asia” - TIME Magazine 2004 year-end Special Report. Having had to write 2 Philippine whale shark articles for the Feb issue of Asian Geographic, we unearthed our long forgotten video made in 2002 - sort of our remembrance and goodbye to Donsol as we immigrated to Australia. Through this video, in the privacy of our homes and offices, we have a chance to see how amazing this special place is.

The Butanding Festival this year will be from the 28th of April to the 15th of May. But the parades may happen when the festival begins.

Only a week back from Tonga, we had to quickly pack for our European trip. Our visit to Germany finally happened and we stayed with mommy Freund for almost a month in her brand new abode in Kiel! Many bratwursts later, we happily enjoyed and celebrated being in lovely Germany, autumn of 2007.

The height of our visit was the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPOTY) in the London Natural History Museum. Attending the awards ceremony with dinner under the dinosaur was something hard to forget.

The winning minke photograph kept Yogi busy with podcast and Nature Live webcast interviews at the museum. The kids in the audience were very excited with the stories behind each picture. Winning a Foto Card from Yogi made them doubly attentive! The activities relating to WPOTY made sure to seal this special time in our memories.

Photo credit: Gary Hopkins, AOL

Another amazing event we unfortunately could not attend was the awards ceremony of Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards 2007 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Winning the first prize for the OCEANS category meant having the minke whale eye image blown up to 2 metres!

Taking a short break from reefs and rainforests, we visited our friends in Sydney who organize walking tours around the city for a superb treat of coffees and chocolates. Shelagh Coleman runs Sydney’s Chocolate Espresso Tours. For 2.5 to 3 hours, you will get to know a little more about the city and a LOT more about coffees and chocolates. A great way to spend 3 hours, don’t you think?

From Sydney, we headed to Tonga for our first Pacific in-water encounter with humpback whales. We stayed in wonderful places - Sandy Beach Resort in Ha’apai, Hakula Lodge and Reef Resort in Vava’u and Fafa Island Resort in Nuku’alofa. To our trusted operators who made sure we had quality interaction with fantastic humpback whales, we’d like to thank Glenn of OceanBlue Adventures in Ha’apai, Janine & Jeff of Whales in the Wild in Vava’u and Christy of the Melinda sailboat also in Vava’u. We loved Tonga!

Now how did these beautiful deep sea living fossils become so vulnerable? Our untiring quest to get them protected is unwavering. We must learn more about them before we can fight for their preservation.

Again onboard the Undersea Explorer for more science, the team goes forth with Dr. Peter Ward and Andy Dunstan.

Mike Ball’s luxurious liveaboard Spoil Sport brought us to the Great Barrier Reef’s famous Ribbon Reefs to interact with the playful minke whales. Moored in Lighthouse Bommie, minkes passed under us criss-crossing the bommie and guests hanging on minke lines. We took the chance to do our signature split level image with Spoily and Pixie Pinnacle.

Somehow friends and family often make it to visit us during Aussie winters. This year was no different with Lars & Carolin Abromeit visiting first. Jet-lagged and straight off the plane, we made them walk the forest for two hours to see waterfalls and trees.

Following close were the arrival of nephew Julius Freund and his friend Timothy and camping was immediately organized. We were definitely busy this month showing off the best of Far North Queensland.

And yet another exciting trip on the Undersea Explorer for more science and adventure. As Karl Jesienowski the main biologist said, the week was packed like a three ring circus. Sharks were caught and tagged, nautilus were caught and tagged and a special guest appearance of Dr. Billy Sinclair caught plankton and no, impossible to tag

We were invited to give a public slideshow in a wonderful place called the Daintree EcoLodge & Spa. With our brochure nicely done and announcements in the Port Douglas Gazette, the turnout was pretty good and it was an altogether fantastic 2 hour affair at the heart of Far North Queensland’s World Heritage Site.

Come the hottest and most humid time of the year, strange things happen in the forest you would never expect. Bioluminescent mushrooms. From 6pm to 3am, we snapped away until our batteries ran dry.

We often tell friends how we need to rough it in the wild to be able to be at our shooting best. Roughing it means camping - sometimes sleeping in our van Carla sometimes pitching tent and camping 5✭. When the sun sets and we hardly have enough light, we sleep early and wake up early. Usually this is when we get the best soft lights and active animal activities.

We went out to Mission Beach to continue looking for box jellyfish in clearish water. We photographed the Surf Lifesavers on duty, sieving the waterfront in and out of the fenced area for stingers. There were lots of moon jellys but hardly any stingers. Jamie Seymour did mention the fleckeri were conspicuously absent. Hmmm.

But while our attention was focused on jellyfish, a beautiful male cassowary decided to divert our attention as it looked for food around the edge of the forest where we were camping.  During our three days stay in Mission Beach, the same cassowary would appear at 6pm and wake us up at 7am like clockwork.