aqwa

yes, i spelled it like that for a reason. last week, the 6 of us went to AQWA, the aquarium of western australia. it was an interesting aquarium to visit because it was only sea life from the west australian coast (which, i must add, is huge). you basically follow a path around the aquarium (think ikea) and travel from the very southern tip of the state and work your way up past perth to the northern most area. a neat set up, actually.

the aquarium has a walk-through tank where they have a few great whites, fish, turtles and rays living. we spent quite a bit of time in there. i thought it was pretty neat to look up and see a great whit swimming above me. by "neat" i mean "i'm not in the tank with them and i would freak out if this happened in real life whilst i was in the ocean". they also have diving in that tank. so tourists (and locals, i suppose) can pay money to dive in the tank with all those creatures. i think you can snorkel as well. no thanks. no thanks.

another cool feature from the aquarium is that they have a "touch pool". which is exactly as it sounds. it is ok, and in fact encouraged, for you to touch the fish and other sea life in the tank. i don't much enjoy doing that (though i did contemplate touching the sea cucumber) but amy plunged her hands in and picked up a starfish.

outside they have a tank with seals in them. apparently the breed of seals in WA are among the rarest breeds of seals. they weren't doing much exciting stuff for us, like playing with balls or jumping, but we were able to go down and see the tank a bit more close up. as well, there is a "ray lagoon" where they have a variety of different rays. unfortunately, it was hard to see and as it wasn't a tank, you couldn't go underground to get a better look.

the downside to the visit to the aquarium is that they have an entire area called "the danger zone" where you learn ALLLLLL about the deadly poisonous sea creatures the inhabit australia and, more specifically, WA. yes yes, we learned all about the box jellyfish (can kill you in 1 minute), the stone fish (also 1 minute), the sea snake, the cone shell, etc. etc. don't worry though, there are anti-venoms for most dangerous sea creatures...assuming that you know you got stung or bitten, that you get out of the water fast enough and find a surf lifesaver who, you can only hope, will be carrying said anti-venom for that specific bite/sting. yeeeeesssss, it's very encouraging to know that they have anti-venoms...

overall though, our trip the aqwa was a lot of fun. we laughed at the silliness of the seahorse which looks like weeds, the oddity of purple starfish (not very camouflaged in my opinion) and the ridiculous fact that we purposely moved to a country that houses most of the deadliest creatures in the world... gotta love decisions!

xo