(Lots of trouble with Blogger today - it won't let me add pictures, and I've tried it on both of my PCs. Ah, well. Someday, when it all works once again, I'll add the pictures from the South Carolina Aquarium.) (Woo - in looking at the preview I see that it used several odd fonts/sizes, and is splitting my paragraphs with strange spacing. What's going on today?) (5/26 Well, here's an update. Some time in the past week, Blogger has decided that I don't have the right browser. Thus, the mess with my postings. So I downloaded Google chrome and I will use it just for Blogger postings. Meanwhile, I'll add some pictures, albeit not too good ones, from the aquarium visit.)
Or, as they are known to some, aquaria. I love them. I don’t know what is so fascinating about watching fish swim around and around and around, but it is: fascinating.
I’ve even been to the Bergen Aquarium in Norway – the only aquarium I’ve encountered in our European trips. The South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston is the latest addition to my growing list of aquaria visited.
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| Why don;t these suckers stay still? |
On the way back down to the first floor, a guide stopped us. He was scheduled to lead a tour but at that hour no one happened to come by - the school groups were busy having their lunch, or perhaps others hadn’t arrived yet – so he collared us and asked if we’d like a tour of the behind-the-scenes. Are you kidding? Lead on!
It was just wonderful – if a bit fishy-smelly – and something I’d always wanted to do in person, having seen behind the scenes only on TV documentaries. Buck, our guide, took us up to where they were preparing the next meals – all sorts of great gobs of fish, chop, chop, chop, and other oooey looking stuff – and finally to the top of the big tank. It was a real learning experience. I wished I had some of my granddaughters there – they would have loved it as much as I did.
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| Buck, our enthusiastic and very informative guide. |
When we resumed our own way we were in time to see the results of all the chopping and mixing when the feeding devices were lowered into the tank. A yank or three on the line and the cover opened and the goo and gish spilled out. What a mess! Sewing as how the tank was completely clear before the feeding started, I'm sure that every bit, large and small, was consumed by every fish according to their own size. Buck has told us that the sharks don’t eat any of the food delivered this way. What happens with them is that later on someone will bang on the side of the tank at the top, and that will be the dinner bell for the sharks’ special meal. I’d love to have seen that, wouldn’t you?
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| Just restin' my eyes here. |
The next on my list must be the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, to date the world’s largest. How can I not see that one? I hope to go next January – stay tuned!
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