Day off Adventure: Aquarium of the Pacific
This blog post is coming so late, please forgive me! Some of the details are fuzzy, but that’s why I take a ton of pictures when I go out; it refreshes my memory.
A few weeks ago, my roommate Sarah (name-dropping because I know she reads these) invited me on a spontaneous visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. As someone who’s always down for an adventure, I couldn’t say no.
I’ve been to this aquarium once before when I was younger, but don’t remember much about it. My “home” aquarium is the Monterey Bay Aquarium. My mom has an annual conference reception there, so my experience with aquariums has been seeing fish swim in the dark, sometimes with illuminated tanks, and not being able to see otters because they were sleeping.
In other words, I was so excited to go to the aquarium.
Upon arrival, we saw the beautiful mosaics along the buildings and structures. The boat-filled harbor lined up with palm trees, pictured below, is peak SoCal.
The beautiful exterior of the Aquarium of the Pacific. What secrets and fortunes lie behind the mother of pearl tiled facade?
We also saw some posters about dining and touring the historic Queen Mary ship, which is supposed to be incredibly haunted. I say “supposed to be” for all you skeptics out there; my opinions on ghosts will be withheld for the moment. Sarah said she wanted to spend the night there. Follow your dreams, Sarah.
The entrance to the building is kind of confusing, I think because a portion of the aquarium is under construction due to the addition of a new exhibit. But we found a way, we found a way.
We weren’t sure where to start, but we soon found our way to the shark section. And it was the same section where you’re able to touch some fish friends. Sarah wanted to boop some snoops, as she so eloquently states from time to time, but it was time to feed the sharks and we had to keep our fingers out of the water.
I think I expected the sharks, which are much smaller then the ones you see in the movies since we are able to pet them with two fingers, to attack the food ferociously. Instead, they were slow at first in realizing they were being fed. Then a few seconds later, they crawled out from under some rocks and ate like fish normally do.
Glob, glob.
Here’s a picture of the shark section. Well, the water park section of it. Water squirted out of the various aquatic friends in the blue-floored area. There were a ton of kids hanging out in this section, but I got this cool shot. I think I was too nervous about dropping my phone in the water to take a picture of the sharks being fed.
In the end, we weren’t able to pet the sharks here because it was feeding time. We did find another petting pool later, where we pet some sea pancakes, I mean stingrays. And by we, I mean Sarah. She also pet some starfish. Finally, some snoops were booped.
We then overheard an announcement for a show starting soon, starring sea lions and seals! Of course, we had to see this show. The show consisted of trainers coming out into the animals’ enclosure and practicing tricks on the seals and sea lions. One of the trainers told us the difference between seals and sea lions and I’m going to be honest with y’all, I forgot. One is bigger than the other, and one has visible ears on its head. That much I remember. The rest is up to you and Google.
The trainers looked so in their element. They looked like they truly belonged there, and the thought of them living out their dreams made me incredibly happy for them. Keep training and caring for our aquatic animal friends; we love and appreciate you!
After the show ended, we saw the cutest animals that won the hearts of many in 2006, penguins!
We then walked inside the aquarium to see the other fish and aquatic animals. We saw giant tanks full of a variety of different fish, smaller tanks of jellyfish and amphibians, and tanks of adorable otters. One fun fact is that otters are in the same family as badgers, so they’re naturally more aggressive and harder to train.
This aquarium is much smaller than I thought it was. Either that, or the Monterey Bay Aquarium is huge and set high expectations in terms of size. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed my time here and am glad I got a chance to spend a day off outside of Anaheim for once. Plus, seeing the adorable penguins and otters made my entire day. I’m looking forward to more adventures to come. And more booping of the snoops.
