Aquarium Zhong

It's like you're a little kid again. 

At the aquarium, 

The world still surprises you,

The wonders still run through you,

and you're still you,

Even ten years later.

Photic blue water with coral crucifixes and brumes of silver fish. Those dungaree toddlers knocking on the glass in hopes of popping a round aperture in which to touch those belugas and otters and turtles and sharks, those kids grow up to be teenagers, still wearing denim- - -just with jeans and no straps, and  after all these years, no matter how hard we squeeze, me and Lyon and Nathan and Darren still can't push our hands through the glass. Damn it.
It's kinda dim and we have to concentrate  just in walking so I don't accidentally knock down any toddlers, seriously. A tourist group will crowd a section of the corridor, maybe. In one of the larger tropic tanks, a green sea turtle and a reef shark brush fins against each other. A 4.5 m arapaimas older looking older than antiquity floats past. Darren caws at a couple of blue-fronted parrots and Lyon is more scared of the butterflies fluttering around the huge greens and heel-gnawed browns of the amazon than the caiman that freaks me out. Nathan wants to steal one of the baby marmosets. Isabel and Kriselda and other girls nickname an adorable upturned sleeping otter after Joseph Han. If I could go here everyday and sit near the thousand animals and just relax and write, eat and sleep, shower and marry and get buried, then I would. Photic blue water with pillowed jellyfish lit up like lanterns and--

The engine rumbles and horns hot sick air against the grey pavement in the afternoon and the bus wheels split the gravel and we're off. Science is explorative but not as rootless as fantasy, the heart that pumps blood and its steel-coiled wires are precedent are precedent to bodies and machines. Our textbooks are important as resources but a relevant field trip can be important--aquariums are playgrounds for the mind.  I think the reason why we went to the aquarium, or at least the reason why I decided to go, was to be inspired by how weird and variated the oceans are and to see how people are trying to save these fish by researching them. And there's always lots of cute kids, too.
What I did take from the aquarium was not answers, but more questions; not questions that a textbook asked me but ones that I tripped over my myself. Do the otters ever feel claustrophobic? How does the arapaima survive so long in the rushing brown rivers of the Amazon, against all the insects and pestilence. Why are the marmosets not considered monkeys?
The afternoon lab was very fun and the instructors were very empathetic by genuinely feeling exciting and being knowledgeable at the same time. The sea cucumbers could literally dissolve in your hands with a little pressure and seeing something so spiked and so soft and strange with its vomiting guts made me wonder how these creatures have survived today. I learned at home that this might be because they are delicious to us and good reproducers; people help to harvest them worldwide and other predators like flatback sea turtles or bottlenose whales are endangered. The balance of each ecosystem tank we could touch was also interesting in how balanced the environments were. A sunflower sea star could wreck any of these tanks because, according to our instructor, it ate basically anything. Also, by being able to identify each and every sample in each phylum tank, an ocean floor would not seem so chaotic and mysterious to us next time, perhaps.

I suppose many species we were confronted with served as pre-cursors to what we would learn later on in class. For example, bloated frogs and mollusks. I once read a National Geographic article on nudibranchs, and seeing one fiery-orange in an aquarium peaked my interest in them again--they're truly the butterflies of the sea, because they're living paintings.
The bell-shaped jellies we witnessed at the aquarium were the same ones we read about in our textbooks, but we got to see their jet propulsion in detail, noticing that they were often very graceful despite the misleading term "jet propulsion." They were scyphozoa--moon jellies in isolated tanks and pacific sea nettles that you can see somewhere down below in this post. They were my favourite invertebrates-- those sea nettles, and they were quite exotic, biological luxuries at the same time as being primitive creatures going back to the time of dinosaurs. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKbarvGFOjw). I wonder what they do with the polyps or where they grow.
Like what we recently learned about the Phylum Platyhelminthes, we saw tube worm masses in the wet lab tank. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykpn-sE_fJI). I confused them with the Sand Eel Worms,  one of the funnier animals. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD-aCmQo3PE). Finally, there were many sea anemones, Anthozoans that Clownfish loved to hide around, despite there not being any predators in the tank or perhaps because there was food stuck to the anemone for them to eat.

I enjoyed the aquarium because honestly, I could hang out with friends and see so many animals it's hard to wrap my head around them all. Little details like stingrays in ponds and even fossilized fish were everywhere, organized only roughly to give a sense of randomness, I guess. The membership cost is 65 dollars for an adult for a year and I'd recommend it to anybody with the money and willpower. The drive and parking might be troublesome. I suggest bussing there instead as its the more financially-savvy thing to do. It's the Vancouver Aquarium--prepare your body.

ALL PHOTOS TAKEN BY ME EXCEPT WHERE SPECIFIED 

SCAVENGER HUNT

1. Sea Otters clean their coats to stay warm by brushing away
cold water.

2. Sea Otters were abundant in many colonies from the Japanese
North to Alaska and from Mexico along the Pacific, but after
centuries of hunting, 1900 years had destroyed all the colonies
except thirteen scattered across the world. California and Alaska
have the most sea otters now. 

3. Anemones provide a home and shelter for the Clownfish. Anemones
are protected by the Clownfish from certain predators. 

4. There was an Anemone tank nearby the Otter Tank kind of
far away but from what I remember they were very dark earth-tone
colours. There were some purples and oranges too. I didn't take
this photo, but it captures a random VanQua indoor tank, anyways.

5. My favourite vertebrate is Darren Kim but my favourite invertebrate is the
Japanese Pacific Jellies they had in an isolated tank. They have stinging
tentacles that can be used to capture prey and also keep themselves
warm. These are their vital Nematocysts. Due to their 96% water
body make up, gas can be diffused through their thinly soft skin. They have
Light detecting organs that lets them know how deep they are in the
water. 

6. The scientific name of these creatures is Delphinapterus leucas.
The Vancouver Aquarium has two belugas, Aurora and Qila.  

7. I did not take this picture. Their little fins
are used to swim and can move
fifty times a second but aren't very fast in
reality.

8. Human Nervous System =0

9. The starry flounder is flat so it can lay low away from
predators. It's also camouflaged. I didn't take this pic.

10. I didn't take this photo. Moon jellies use very
slow jet propulsion from their tentacles and pushing in
and then releasing their bells. They have colenterons
that pulls in the plankton that gets stuck
from their tentacles. 

11. This octopus was really hidden. Their suction cups
hold prey. It is very good at disguising itself, hiding
in the shadows and being rock-colored. Their tight
tentacles function like snakes squeezing their prey
tight and dead and final.  

12. Sea Lions use haulots for resting and rookeries
for rearing the young. These sites vary but include
bouldered areas and beaches. 

13, 14. Check it. This Caiman is from South America.
The true crocodile is a bit larger than this Caiman
and it is the same colour as its environment--
a leathery muddy green and brown.  

15. The Amazon Arapaima is 4.5 meters long and
the largest freshwater fish VanQua has. So ca-ute.

16. Vegetarian Fish in Tamabaqui

17. Piranhas are the biggest threat
to humans when they bleed in the
water? Didn't take this photo, either. 

18. They have no bones. The answer to that question
made me laugh--instead, sharks have cartilage.
Nathaniel Pathoc has 206 bones. 

19. Laced Moray, Common Bluestripe Snappers,
Redtail Butterflyfish, Yellowface Angelfish, Indo-Pacific
Sergeants--examples of other fish living with
the sharks and turtles as listed on the identification
boards below the tank. 

20. The Giant Red Sea Urchin is covered with
spines that tighten and protect it
from animals that can't rip through such sharp
defences. 

21. Archerfish hide in the darkness and raise their
noses to insects, shooting a stream of water
that knocks the insect into the water. Then the
rest is algebra. 

22. This turtle's name is Schoona. He's very busy.   

Thank you for reading this blog!