Wednesday 15 August 2018

Gros Morne

Today it rained all day, so I stopped at the Insectarium. They import butterfly chrysalis from Brazil and the Philippines to hatch and release into the butterfly house, and have three floors of exhibits - mounted dead insects and live exhibits including a bee hive and leaf cutting ants.


It was interesting to see the variety of Newfoundland insects, including a dinner plate sized spider.

I went on a tour of the Western Brook Pond, which would be a fjord if it wasn’t broken off from the coast. You need to walk for more than half an hour to get to the edge of the pond where the boat tour starts, and the weather was such that only at the last minute did they decide it could go ahead. Glaciers carved the valley of the pond into clear U shapes, and the guide pointed out various rockfalls that have happened within recorded history (one while one of their boats was going past). At the end of the pond you can see further down the valley, where more waterfalls exist.

The pond is one of the main reasons the Gros Morne National Park exists, being a ultraogliotrophic, Lake and one of the very few such lakes in pristine condition in the world, as they become polluted exceptionally easily.







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