In all the years I've visited San Francisco, and Fisherman's Wharf in particular, I never knew there was an aquarium nearby. I may have seen it, but it just never registered in my head to pay it a visit if I did see it.
Well, I finally remedied the situation during this current trip to San Jose. The wife and I jumped into our Fiat 500 rental and zooted down the 280 Freeway into San Francisco to see the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, and the Aquarium of the Bay next to Pier 29.
The first exhibit you encounter is a tank full of anchovies swimming in an awesome circle. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them doing what anchovies do best - trying to stay alive by herding en masse.
It takes you a little while to get to the exhibits. First you need to walk up some stairs to the main entrance (there is an elevator available), then using the discount ticket you received when you parked your car, fork over your money. Discounts? Yep, for kids and seniors, plus there are all kinds of combo packages available.
Then you take an elevator up to the third floor. That's when you encounter the first exhibits.
I spent a bunch of time at the anenome tanks, checking out the beautifully colored reef fish. The tanks are ablaze with color, and people are standing in front of them snapping pictures and taking movies like crazy. I counted at least three people using their iPads to take pictures. Now that's something new; nobody used to do that before, to the best of my knowledge.
The yellow fish are remarkable. I don't know what kind they are, as I couldn't spot identification plaques. No matter, like I said, people (including me) were mesmerized by the fish. It took a while before I was able to put my camera up against the glass to minimize reflection.
We then moved on to the jellyfish exhibits. Now THOSE were especially spectacular.
I've seen jellyfish exhibits before in various city aquaria during my travels, but it never fails to amaze me how beautiful these sea creatures are. Not a care in the world, just floating up and down in the water, dangling their deadly tentacles, waiting for some unaware fish to stumble into them and get stung to death.
I heard a kid asking her dad why this particular kind of jellyfish was upside down. The dad was perplexed and didn't have an answer for his daughter. Me, I would have said the jellyfish wasn't upside down, that's just the way it is, legs up.
Besides, who the heck really knows what's up and what's down with a jellyfish anyway? But I didn't say a thing. I'm not going to butt into a conversation between a girl and her father. Nope, not me.
Anemonies are beautiful sea creatures, they look like flowers swaying in the breeze. These are Tube Anemone (Pachycerianthus fimbriatus). I'm not sure why I wanted you to know I knew that. But that's what they are. So beautiful, so enchanting, so ... dangerous to the touch.
After going through those exhibits, you get back on the elevator and it takes you back down to the first floor where you can (1) walk through a couple of long, underwater tubes with sharks, rays, fish and other sea creatures all around you, then (2) enter a touching pool area where you can make actual physical contact with some of them.
Clinging onto one of the glass tube walls was this 19-legged starfish that obviously got a little too close to a shark or something. See those two lighter-colored arms on the left? They're regenerating after being chomped off or something.
I'm reminded of the Medusa in Greek mythology with her head-snake problem.
Here's what the tubes look like. They're pretty long, much longer than the last one I went through at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Not only that, there are two of them. It got pretty crowded at times with lots of foreign visitors crowding through at the same time. Did you ever notice tourists from abroad always travel in groups of four or more?
It took a while for the wife and me to go through the tubes, mainly because I was stopping a lot, waiting for the tourists to get out of the way so I could snap my camera. I took a lot more pictures in the tubes, but most of them turned out blurry because the fish swim so darned fast and the automatic shutter speed is too slow because of the low-light situation.
After the tubes, you leave the darkness and enter the touching pool portion of the aquarium. In the pool above, a little shark swims lazily around, just waiting for someone to poke their finger into the water. Just a finger, just one finger. That's all the staff person allows, to minimize the shark's contact with humans.
Most of us did it just once. I didn't know about the other people, but I don't trust a shark to tolerate even a one-finger touch. Quick dip, touch, and yank it out. That's what I did.
The Aquarium of the Bay isn't a very big place, but it's pretty interesting. You can have your picture taken against a green background and they'll place you in the water with the fishies, the sharks, and maybe even a giant octopus. The picture session is free and if you like what you see when you check it out at the gift shop, you can buy it.
We sometimes do this just for the heck of it, but decided to pass this time (the wife was tired and sleepy, and I'm sure any women reading this would understand).
There's more, but you're going to have to discover what's there for yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment