Under the sea

Imagine, for a moment, that this dolphin is saying to you, "Hey bro.  Uber-long post ahead, yo".  Thanks.

So I got sick, then I got fiendishly busy but between the two, I've really been wanting to post photos of the things I did before I got... well, sick and busy.  I'm still slightly delirious from drowsy medication, but I thought I'd have a bash.  

A couple of weekends ago, my friend Wai Kit and I decided to hit the new S.E.A. Aquarium.  Wai Kit had cheap Groupon tickets and a background in biology and I, well, I just freakin' love to look at fish.  

I was also really excited for the chance to take some pictures and to see what is now the biggest oceanarium in the world.  The experience was exhilarating and disappointing in equal measure.  For one, I'm glad I went with Kit because he is equally excited by animals.  We kept waving frantically at each other and going, "Oh my god!  It's a insert-your-choice-of-sea-creature-here".

For another, the aquarium is huge.  We walked slowly through it for two hours savouring the sights and at the end of the two hours, we were still walking.  The species are not as quirky as some of those that you get at the Underwater World (sea angels and garden eels, anyone?) but for the sheer range, number and size of the display, it's absolutely worth a visit.  

What was disappointing to me though, was the photography - well, my photography in particular.  My first instinct was to bring a zoom lens, but then I thought about how dark it was and settled on the 35mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.  It turned out to be absolutely the right choice but I hadn't realised just how reflective and distorting aquarium panes can be and with the largest acrylic viewing panel in the world coming in at about a foot thick, I found it impossible to take pictures that didn't come out cloudy, out-of-focus and excessively blue.

That said, I have decided anyway to subject you to a ton of the least badly taken photos of... fish.  I know.  I'm a real giver.

Wai Kit and I went on a Friday morning and we showed up even before the aquarium opened in order to beat the queues.  It worked... for a about a minute.  We were congratulating ourselves on being first in line and then busloads of tourists pulled up and we were caught in the deluge anyway. 

While waiting for the aquarium to open, we sat and watched some preliminary video about Admiral Zheng He, whom I don't know from Adam.  The display was pretty cool though - they had built the Zheng He museum in a life-sized ship and on the front, there was a wooden carving of a lion.  Before the video started, the lion suddenly blinked open glowing red eyes and started to spew smoke.  Very Night at the Museum.

The fish inside the aquarium are grouped together by species so I thought I'd just put the photos together that way for convenience.  

There were tanks full of puffers.  I kind of love how in the second photo, the two fish look as if they've just accomplished a shady drug deal and are pretending not to know each other as they hurry off in opposite directions.

The boxfish were also pretty cute.  That second guy looks quite thuggish, as if he's demanding to know what my deal is.  Look at those transclucent fins!  Could you just die?  (Bonus points for recognising the Fresh Prince of Bel Air reference.)  There was a little yellow-green cow boxfish with horns, but I didn't get a good shot of him.

Archerfish!  I briefly wondered if the aquarium staff hung random insects on the branches for them to spit down on a daily basis.  I would. 

There was a perspex bridge where little fish and skates swam under our feet and then we queued up with all the four year olds in Singapore to get to the touch pool.  Wai Kit wanted to touch everything; I just took pictures.

I really liked the chocolate chip sea star, while Wai Kit was thrilled that he got to touch the little bamboo shark in the picture above.  Back in the Underwater World, I loved the exhibit where you got to pat and feed the rays and skates.  Then, I couldn't bring myself to eat stingray for six months so I decided not to go back for awhile.

There were many large columns like this one spread throughout the aquarium and we would just stand there for a few minutes, soaking in the colours and crazy swirls of fish.

There were sea horses and ugly, bloated frogfish.

And then, there were cuttlefish.  I love cephalopods.  They are among my favourite sea creatures and I can sit and watch them going about their business for hours, particularly octopodes.  Many years ago, I learned that cuttlefish will greet you if you wave at them slowly, as if your hand is another cuttlefish altogether.  Every non-science person I've told this to seems to think that I'm trying to pull a fast one, but if you look at the second picture, you can see that the cuttlefish is responding to me. 

Beyond that, there is apparently a whole series of sign language that you can learn to communicate with cuttlefish, and I've read stories online about cuttlefish even trying to offer food to a person who showed them the right hand signals!  So fascinating.

We watched them hover and pulse colours for awhile, and then walked on.

I wanted to dislike the dolphin exhibit.  I really did.

I'm not someone who goes around thinking about cruelty to animals a lot but at work, we'd recently been teaching classes on how bad zoos could really hurt animals and I know that dolphins need lots of space and freedom.  So I was prepared to feel stomach-churningly disgusted when I watched them sluggishly pacing circles in a tiny tank.

I don't know much about animal husbandry, but exactly the opposite thing happened.  We pulled up at two small windows labelled Dolphin Island.  When I looked inside, there was nothing there, and I wondered if I'd been confused in thinking that the dolphins had arrived. 

And then, I swear, it was just like magic.

There was a massive splash and five dolphins exploded into the water from above.  I'm not the type of girl who is crazy about dolphins and whales and unicorns but I couldn't help it.  I grabbed Wai Kit's arm and squealed and the two of us stood in awe watching them spinning and whizzing playfully through the water.

The lady manning the exhibit explained that the dolphins actually have eleven different lagoons spread out across the whole aquarium and that they can swim through and jump in and out of them as they please.  At any one time, they're spread out across about six olympic sized swimming pools of water and since there is only one viewing area, they're free to swim up to it only when they feel like it.  The pane is a two-way pane that we were not allowed to touch or pound on, and since the dolphins can see the humans, they sometimes come up to the glass to interact.

I thought this was quite a good idea, better than having tourists pressed thickly up against the glass all round a tiny enclosure without any respite.  She also told us that the dolphins are identified by the white scars that they get when they bite or nip each other, which is a natural behaviour.

There is something magical about a dolphin that I now finally understand.  Watching them swim and shoot through the blue and leap in and out of the enclosure really lifted my spirits and maybe I was anthropomorphising, but I felt like they were being playful.  Occasionally, one would pause to look at us curiously, as if to say, "Oh, you're still there," (see: the first picture in this post) and then another one would come up behind it and the chase would begin again.

As I've said, I don't have the slightest clue about how to keep dolphins, but it seemed like we could be doing worse.  We walked away, feeling a curious lightness, and came upon the jellyfish exhibit. 

Jellyfish remind me of the moon.  They were as graceful as the dolphins in a different way - serene, silent, unearthly.

We also saw a heap of Cassiopeia, or upside-down jellyfish, that I didn't manage to get a picture of.  They live upside down, on the swamp or sea bottom, and they photosynthesise.  I couldn't get over it.

I was already high on dolphins and jellies and when we walked into the viewing gallery for the largest tank in the whole aquarium, I lost it altogether.  Photos can't do justice to how huge this exhibit it.  It stretched about two or three stories high and I couldn't capture how wide it was.

There were sharks, schools of fish, manta rays so huge that they were as big as two men and carried themselves in a simultaneously unwieldy and graceful way.  Wai Kit and I sat on the lush carpet in front of the acrylic for a good half an hour and talked in hushed tones about the manta rays that were powering effortlessly through the water.  The tank is so big that the fish adopt schooling behaviour and we could see them flicking and shimmering as a cloud near the surface.

I also spent my time people watching.  I love watching people watching things; I love the looks of wonder and surprise on their faces and the vicarious pleasure that parents get when their children discover things for the first time.  Half my time in exhibits is spent hiding behind pillars and enjoying people's reactions to them (the exhibits, not the pillars.  Although if someone were excited by a pillar, well, I would enjoy seeing that too).

We finished up by walking through the eel and shark exhibits.

There is nothing quite so evil-looking as an eel.  Standing in front of the tank and watching them gulp and slither nefariously overhead, I was reminded of Flotsam and Jetsam in Disney's The Little Mermaid.  They looked exactly like the smooth, muscled giant morays that were simultaneously glaring and smiling at me just then.

The hammerhead sharks really cracked me up.  I love how they look permanently disgruntled; the one above is like, "Come at me bro".

Afterwards, we had a wander through the gift shop and bought fish-themed notebooks for our students.

We ended our outing at the Malaysian street food centre next door and Ah Kit, who comes from across the Causeway, was pleasantly surprised with the quality and the prices of the food.  We shared a Penang assam laksa and Penang char koay teow between us and then gorged on a really delicious chendol for dessert.

If you're still with me, thanks for wading through that random pile of pictures!  I had an awesome time and if you're anything like me (for example, if you went straight to the sea episodes of BBC's Planet Earth), you'll enjoy the S.E.A aquarium. 

I'm a little sad I didn't get better pictures of the giant tank, but that just means that I get to go back and try again some time!  Lessons learned: there is no point bringing a zoom lens when you can't lean and zoom beyond the glass anyway and I really need to practise focusing behind the boundaries of the tank.

And that, as they say, is that.  I'll just leave you with an idea of how much Wai Kit loves jellyfish...

... which is a lot.