To help celebrate its tenth anniversary, I visited the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Tuesday. Yes, it has taken me that long. While I have visited the Monterey Aquarium twice, I never got around to visiting the one in my own back yard. And that was only because KL mentioned she was going and I decided to tag along.
If you have never been, all I can say is "GO!" I have painted quite a few fish/ocean/undersea ceramic tiles, most of which were sea creatures from my imagination. But who needs imagination when you are faced with the real thing? The fish are beautiful and unbelievable beyond any attempt to paint something fanciful.
Taking photos was not easy: through glass, underwater, changing light, and those sea creatures will not sit still for a portrait—not even the sea anemones. But halfway though our day my memory card filled up as I realized I had taken 200 photos! Yes, I could have zapped some previous images but my practice is to fill up a one gig card, dump the whole thing on to a CD and start over. Maybe it was just as well, as sometimes the camera can get in the way of the immediate experience when you are seeing everything through the camera lens and not your own eyeballs. None of the photos I took are spectacular, but they are an impression of a moment.
Although all the different kinds of fish were enjoyable, I loved the coral reefs and ocean plants just as much. The myriad shapes, colors and forms were amazing. I felt as though I was in a moving art gallery. Why do we mere mortals attempt to create art when Alice, Goddess of Nature, will always win the prizes?
I was impressed with the aquarium overall—a good mix of inside and outside exhibits. I enjoyed discovering diverse regions of the oceans such as Southern California and Baja, the North Pacific, and the coral reefs of the Pacific. Outside it was fun to see the seals at mealtime and to touch the silky, velvet stingrays as they swam past.
Almost immediately I developed a craving for a fish sandwich! At lunchtime we walked over to restaurant row where I devoured two wonderful fish tacos at Islands. As we walked back to the aquarium we decided on an impulse to take the 45-minute harbor cruise. Out on the water with salt spray and wind in my face all my cares and worries drifted away.
We finished up the afternoon back at the aquarium. It was much quieter as the bus loads of school kids had left. Of course, I am glad that young students are able to visit a facility that teaches about the importance of the oceans. Hopefully there are some budding marine biologists among them.
On the way out we revisited the Lorikeet Forest. Over 100 of these noisy but vividly-colored birds live there. One of them took a fancy to my straw sun visor and when I attempted to put him back on his branch he became very upset and took a good bite out of two of my fingers!
As we drove home on the freeway I felt as if I had taken a vacation to another country. I have images of the beautiful sea creatures swimming around in my head and some ideas for more tiles.
Now I feel like having a tuna sandwich for lunch...
(photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)
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