Adele Island

Adele Island is about 100 km from the Kimberley coastline. We visited it at high tide, when the huge sandbar that surrounds it was underwater. As it’s a very special area, we weren’t allowed to step foot on the island, nor to snorkel or dive in its surrounding reef.

This picture shows the island, its lighthouse, and some of the surf hitting the reef. Inside the reef, the water was extremely calm. As the government has worked hard to eliminate the Polynesian rat from the island, there are enormous numbers of birds here. We also saw numerous stingrays, turtles and some sharks. The island itself is covered with shore salt grass and other plants. Lots of birds bred here, including lesser frigate birds, pelicans, brown boobies, grey tailed tattlers and red necked stints, all of which we saw. The photos only show a few birds, but there were masses of them everywhere.

Although the breeding season isn’t supposed to begin yet, we saw a few brown boobies about to fledge.

There appeared to be one tree here - a mangrove. It was having a hard time with all the brown boobies using it as a perch.

There’s also a lot of free coral, that floats on currents around Australia, and is used by small turtles and seahorses to hide from their predators until they become adults.