New Engalnd Aquarium - Boston
Suspended whale shark greets visitors
Was itching to really get outdoors and out of Boston for a change. The moment my colleague mentioned the word "Aquarium", I was all set to go no matter what. The very next weekend happened to be a long one and made time on Monday to head to the
New England Aquarium, Boston. Past noon arrived at the aquarium with a serpentine queue
for the tickets greeting me at the entrance, thanks to the Presidents day holiday for
everyone.
Magnificent "Seawee-sea horses"
with one of nature's most complete camouflages.
Humboldt penguins! Stepping in, was delighted to see the penguin show going on. They have been trained to wave with their wings/flippers. They had about 4 varieties of penguins in the pool surrounding the large main tank. Built around the penguin section is a HUGE 4 storey high main tank housing almost
everything marine from sharks to angels to little dottybacks.
The first tank they had on display was one labelled "Historic fish" showing
the Arowana, the Plecostumus, Long nose-Gar.
Long-losed gar
Plecostamus and Motoro stingray
Archerfish
South American turtle If one wanted to see how big a "red tail catfish" gets, one had to see the one in the tank. It was close to 4 feet :-O One of the Uaru pairs were breeding in the heavily crowded, it was quite a sight to see the parents guarding the fry.
Uaru parent tending fry
Was explaining the way the parents take care to a kid and one of the staff happened to ask how I knew all of this. This started a conversation and she showed me around a few tanks and took me to the hospital tanks section and inside the seal training section. Unfortunately photography wasn’t allowed in those sections as they were marked for staff only. Then came one of the stockiest fish I'd ever seen in person, the grouper. The single
pair was huge and pretty laid back, almost lazy.
Grouper
In one of the sub-sections, they had created a shore-line biotope with sea urchins.
One small section of a rocky tank was kept for the small africans, could spot a few Julies.
A tank had a pair of Electric eels with a electric meter indicating the intensity and what that meant (hunting, spying, etc.)
Moving on to the top floor, saw a few staff feeding the turtles and fish with participation from the public, which I think is a great idea to induce enthusiasm.
The large tank had a spiraling staircase with windows through which one could see the
inhabitants.
At the base of the tank were a few display tanks and must say they impressed me to the core. All of the corals in the marine display tanks were home-grown (cultivated @ the aquarium)
It was fun watching the kids name the fish as per their names from "Finding Nemo" I guess from here, I'll let the pictures do the talking
Then came the tank titled "Poisonous fish" featuring Lionfish, puffers and
the worst of them the StoneFish
Lionfish
Puffer With time now running out, had to get back to Government Center to catch the train back
to the apartment. |
