Under the Sea

Since the past summer was my last completely free summer for the next few years, one of my requests for places to go was the New England Aquarium. Mainly, I wanted to see the penguins, but the hundreds of other fish and animals were cool too. The New England Aquarium has three species of penguins – African, Little blue, and Rockhopper penguins. All three species live in more temperate climates than Adelie and Emperor penguins, which breed on Antarctica itself. Little blue penguins are the smallest penguin species, reaching an adult height and weight of twelve inches and two to three pounds. They’re kind of adorable. New goal: hug a penguin.

African penguins.  Just standing?  Or plotting their escape?

Other things of note we saw: the sea lion show, baby sharks, tiny lobsters, sea turtles, and lots of fish. Sea lions are fast, have great flip turns, and will work for fish. The baby sharks look a bit like a cross between a fish and an eel, and they look like they have way too many fins, but I guess that’s actually how many fins sharks have. (Six, if anyone was wondering – pectoral, first dorsal, pelvic, second dorsal, anal, and caudal.) The lobsters were interesting because the aquarium had a series of tanks showing the lobsters at different stages of growth. They start out looking like shrimp or crayfish before growing into their lobster-like selves at adulthood.

Little blue penguins

The fish and different habitats are always interesting. The New England Aquarium had a tank with a whole bunch of mackerel or some other schooling fish showing how they move. While looking up schooling fish, I found out that fish shoal if they hang out together, but they school if they perform coordinated movement. English is weird.

Anyway, I enjoyed the aquarium. I like aquariums in general, even if you are mostly seeing a variety of fish that you’re never going to remember unless you’re actually an ichthyologist. In terms of less common exhibits, the National Aquarium in Baltimore (I was in the city for a conference) has a whole room of jellyfish, and the aquarium in Singapore has one of those tanks that’s also a tunnel you can walk through. And Boston has penguins.

The New England Aquarium isn’t very large, and could be seen in a couple hours if you rush a bit. If you really want to read everything about every fish, and go to a lot of presentations, this could probably be stretched to half a day (4-ish hours?). I had to leave after two and a half hours because the group I was with wanted to get lunch. So I had to say bye to the penguins.