Michael's Weblog

With the day on my own, I spent Friday at the largest aquarium in the world, the Georgia Aquarium. If you plan to go, make sure you buy your tickets online ahead of time. There was a ton of people and they brought the kids in by the bus load (literally). Also, if you can afford it, go on the Behind the Scenes tour. I found it very cool and you get a cool lanyard.

The aquarium has just about every kind of marine life you can think of. Well, I can think of [quite] a few they don't have. There are actually five different areas: Cold Water Quest (Beluga whales/sea lions/sea otters/penguins), Ocean Voyager (Whale sharks/golden trevally/grouper/stingrays), Georgia Explorer (mostly an awesome play area for kids with many touch tanks), River Scout (piranha/otters), Tropical Diver (seahorses/juvenile black tip sharks/live coral/yellow tangs/jellyfish). If you've been to the South Carolina Aquarium you've seen most of the Georgia Explorer fish because we have the same coast line. The river scout had a lot of fish from the Amazon, which we also have right now at the SCA.

The coolest thing to see, imho, was the whale sharks. They had two (Ralph and Norton), which are the only two in captivity. I've been a fan of this species for a long time. Ralph and Norton are currently around 16 feet long. They'll grow to be about twice that, making them the largest known fish (they are the size of whales but in the family of the shark) in the sea. Absolutely enormous. In the picture above, golden trevally are being pushed along by Norton. They have a bit of a symbiotic relationship. If anyone wants to take me diving where I can swim with whale sharks let me know! Now that I've gotten to see them, it's time to dive with them. The Beluga whales were also very cool to see. I believe there is a total of 5, but one is very sick and is quarantined from the other 4. The Belugas are very playful so it's quite easy to just stand in front of the tank memorized.

Things I was disappointed by:
-I didn't really care much for the layout because when you walk in, you are dumped into a big room with no good starting point. There is no flow outside of the 5 exhibit areas and if you go into the wrong area at the wrong time there are too many people to contend with.
-No changing exhibits. This is more of a complaint for the annual pass holders. Everything they had was very permanent (although with enough money and sponsorships I guess anything is possible). I like how the SCA has a small area that can change. The GA is big, but they don't really have everything. The flip side is that they can always add new species to the tanks they have now, and most of the fish are juvenile so it could be fun to watch them grow.
-Not enough sharks. Whale sharks are awesome I'll admit. Other than that they had very few..black tip/bonnet head/hammerhead/whitetip. Of these they appeared to be juvenile and very few and far between.

I've written an awful lot for a picture day so I'll move on. I'll tell you about the weekend later.