New England Aquarium - part 2

In my previous New England Aquarium post, I mentioned that I had more pictures from our visit there that I was going to post this time. After a long week-end of driving (more about that some other time), I'm finally going to show them.

The first picture is in a new part of the aquarium that is quite exciting. If there aren't a million people at the aquarium (like there were by the time we got to the tank) and if they aren't a bunch of children who never learned to take turns (as there were when we got to the tank), you can actually step up to the edge of this tank and touch the rays and sharks (!) as they swim by. In the Shark and Ray Touch Tank this day, the sharks were few and far between and when they came by, I was usually being pushed out of the way by kids and their parents who also didn't know about taking turns. But the rays were much more numerous and I was able to sneak up close enough for a photo this one time. This is such a beautiful scene to me. Just as the penguins seemed to be flying in the water, these rays seem to fly rather than swim.The contrast of the sandy bottom in the foreground and the light blue further back makes it seem like they are leaving the sea and flying into the air.

The last picture I want to show you is of the Sea Anemone tank. The colors are amazing and I wish I had better skills at photography to get them into my pictures. If I'd had a tripod, I could have set the camera for a long exposure to get more light. But I didn't have my tripod so I just have to be satisfied with what I was able to do. The fact that the picture is taken through the glass of the tank doesn't help, either. I wonder if a polarizing filter would help there? I'm going to look into techniques for taking pictures through glass.

Isn't it funny how so many things in the sea are named after something on the land? Sea Anemones are named after the Anemone flower. We have Sea Cucumbers, Sea Lions, Sea Horses, Sea Urchins, Sea Weed and even Sea Monkeys. Then there is the Star Fish with its doubly removed name. It's not a fish and it only looks like a caricature of a star but that's what we call it. With the vast expanse of the sea and the myriad creatures in it, you'd think we could be a little more creative in our naming.

Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
teeming with life of every kind,
both large and small.

See the ships sailing along,
and Leviathan,
which you made to play in the sea. 

Psalm 104:25-26  New Living Translation