I was lucky enough to be at the Aquarium at Otter feeding time. The viewing stand is upstairs and was incredibly crowded, even though I did show up a half-hour early for it. It was, however, interesting to see the trainers put the otters through their moves.
While I’m sure that the seals were encouraged to be “at” the aquarium (probably by an availability of food and the rocks to lay on), there was nothing actually forcing them to be there or preventing them from leaving. They were an interesting view out over the bay and the aquarium restaurant (which had excellent food, by the way, but make sure you take the restaurant and not the cafeteria) looked out over the bay and the seals.
The bay also attracted a variety of birds, including flocks of pelicans which skimmed over the water near the viewing platform.
The “The Secret Lives of Seahorses” exhibit at the Aquarium was one of the more crowded ones. It was also one of the more difficult ones to shoot. Flash was not allowed and a lot of the tanks were curved, which made getting an in-focus difficult or impossible in some cases. However, there was at least one flat, well lit tank that I got some good pictures out of.
One of the big attractions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium was their Jellyfish display. It is, by far the best display I have ever seen. It was surprisingly easy to photograph as well. One of the displays was of small jellyfish that had scintillating multi-colored lights running along their body. That is something that just doesn’t show on a still photograph, so I shot a bit of video. The edited sequence is about a minute-and-a-half long and included in this post and the Flickr set.
During my trip to San Francisco, I went down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I can see why it is considered one of the best aquariums in the world. It was quite impressive. This post just scratches the surface of the aquarium and over the next several days I will be posting individual areas of the aquarium not covered here, including the Sea Dragons, Jellyfish, Otters, and Seals.
For being at an aquarium, I actually didn’t take many pictures of fish. However, I did take some, and some of penguins, included below.
