The Aquarium reopens!

We went to the Steinhart Aquarium today with Grandma. We usually go on our field trips on Thursdays and so I felt like it was a Thursday all day. I suppose it has something to do with habit or conditioning. Pavlov's dog...etc.

Every part of the new building and exhibits were spectacular! The one point of disappointment is that they are not yet reciprocal with all the other science museums and so our passes didn't work. As the singular negative point...I'd say that not bad at all! We arrived shortly after 10 and stayed until 3:30. We didn't see everything. There was a Tropical Rainforest exhibit in the middle of the building that the children were immediately drawn to. From the line to get into the habitat you could look down through the water and see the basement level where people were walking underneath. Hunter was especially excited to go "underwater". The tempureature got hotter and hotter as we progressed up all four levels of the rainforest habitat. It seems rather ironic to me that such a hot place is necessary to keep the rest of the world cool. The trees absorb the CO2 and produce oxygen keeping the ecosystem and the planet balanced just so. The butterflies thrive in that warm climate.
After the rain forest habitat we went to the basement and saw the fishes up close. There were color cards for the children to see all the different kinds of fish in the tank. We made a game to see if you could find all the fish and other animals on the card.

At the tide pool the children got to touch and hold starfish, sea urchins and abalone. A marine biologist explained how some starfish are predatory and some are scavengers. They eat by turning their stomachs inside out and dissolving their food with the digestive juices.

As a child I had seen some show about sea anemones and how they ate. My mom took us to an aquarium, and at the tide pool they had some in the deeper parts that weren't meant to touch. I feel bad about it now, but I took a star fish and put it into the sea anemone. Sure enough, it folded it up and ate it. I wonder if the staff was confused when they realized they were missing a starfish.

Rather than bring sandwiches with us I brought a whole loaf of bread, peanut butter and strawberry jelly. I made sandwiches on the spot. It seems to work out better that way especially if somebody wants more than one. We must be quite the sight! Since my mom came with us there are actually a few pictures of me, too. I just went through our picture files and since I'm usually the one taking the pictures, I'm in very few of them over the last five years.

The Alligator pond was just as I remembered it from our outings years ago. The railing was exactly the same. I suspect they took it out very carefully from the previous building to reuse it in the new one. There were two alligators that we saw. A green one and an albino one. Neither one was moving, but the kids all thought that the white one was fake. I tried to explain that it was albino and very much real. When we got home and reviewed the pictures I took they still thought it was fake.