Monterey Aquarium

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From San Simeon we drove up the coast on Highway 1, passing along the stunning coast with its views, through Big Sur and we have now returned to Monterey, in order to fulfill our promise to ourselves to revisit the Aquarium. We first visited in 1997 with the kids, we attempted to revisit in November last year, but Sally was too ill, so we just camped in the Monterey Fairground for a week, hoping she would recover enough for us to make the visit.
However this time we arrived in good time and were set up ready to visit the Aquarium.
We set out as early as we could and managed to arrive at the Aquarium just after opening time, we decided that we would like to take the ‘Behind The Scenes’ Tour as well.
This time we were armed with a timetable of events and moved smartly to the Penguins, to see them being fed at 10.30. Cute little Blackfooted Penguins whose home, surprisingly, is Namibia in Southern Africa.
We now had to traverse the length of the Aquarium to see the fish being fed in the gigantic Open Sea Tank. This was a most amazing experience as the main act for this was the feeding of the sardine! Well in this case 20,000 of them. Most of the time they cruise unseen around the bottom of the tank, leaving the top to the tuna, sharks, sunfish, dolphin tuna (mahi Mahi). However come feeding time a handful of Krill dropped in the water brings them swarming to the surface where they swim almost as a single organism, round and round, sweeping up the food being offered. Miraculously parting into two swarms as the bigger fish swim through trying to grab one of them. The group display was amazing. So amazing that when the food was gone and they sank back out of site as quickly as they had arrived there was a spontaneous round of applause – for sardines I ask you!
From there we had a chance to visit one of our favourite areas – the Moon Jellies. They are jellyfish found in Monterey bay and with subtle background lighting they produce yet another amazing display as they appear to bioflouresc (although it is only an effect of the light) in their tanks and drift aimlessly around. It was here taht I really appreciated the amazing optical quality of the tank material, they are designed to be optically neutral, being laminated acrylic. The view was excellent, with very little distortion, great for taking pictures.
From there we went on our guided tour behind the scenes (we really pushed the boat out on this visit), this was great fun and we got a chance to see lots of fish food and water pipes, as well as looked down on the open tank tops and checked out the SCUBA divers area. Then we had time to sit on the patio and have lunch watching the wild life on Monterey Bay. There were a couple of Sae Otters swimming round and a seal also came swimming close into the shore.
We now just caught the end of the a short viewing of the Albatross, which was fascinating
From here we had a look round the shore life exhibits where we could see a lot of hsore birds, who had been rescued and could not be returned to the wild, then we explored the touchy feely exhibit, where we could pick up and touch crabs, starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and abalone. That was relly fun.
This display led us to the Octopus area, where there are two giant Octopus in separate tanks. Lo and behold just as we arrive they start to feed these giants and we see them swimming around and being very lively, it was an excellent display.
Now we got into conversation with a volunteer who kindly took us to see the Sea Horses being fed. The Sea Horses were lovely to watch, especially the Leafy Dragon Fish. While we were there the lady told us that there would be an extra Sea Otter Feeding Session, where one of the sea otters was being employed as a surrogate mother to teach an orphaned baby how to become a proper Sea Otter. That was great fun seeing them being fed and playing around in the water.
All too soon our day was complete, we had really enjoyed ourselves, but were both tired out, so we stopped at the local Chinese Restaurant for a meal. A lovely day.