New England Aquarium

Click to see the diver on the right

While my wife was going through two days of tests in Boston at the Boston Medical Center, I took my children to the New England Aquarium. I had been there about 20 years ago and was looking forward to seeing it again. My kids had never been there. We got there early before the crowds filled the building. It probably got so crowded because the weather was so bad that day.

From the aquarium website

The biggest feature of the aquarium is its huge, saltwater tank. Hundreds of different kinds of fish and turtles swim around in what looks like a coral reef. In the first picture at the top, my son joked that we came to an aquarium to see people. Yes, it takes a lot of people to maintain the environment and to feed the animals. The small picture to the left gives you a better idea of the scale of the tank. It holds 200,000 gallons of salt water and is 40 feet high and 23 feet wide.

Another popular feature is the penguin display. They are quite active (and noisy at times) and everyone seemed to spend the most time watching them. And yes, another human in the picture. It's amazing how many people it takes to maintain the aquarium. I don't remember seeing this many people at the zoo. Someone has to clean up the mess the penguins leave behind on the rocks and the penguins are too busy to do it themselves.

They don't just stand around. The penguins love to swim. The next picture, on the left, shows the penguins swimming around the huge pool provided for them. It circles the large salt water tank shown above. It was hard to tell when one penguin started and stopped but they seemed to like swimming for long periods. They are fast and graceful and seem to be flying underwater and, being birds, maybe that's why it looks that way.

Well, I'm running out of space and time so I'll leave the last two pictures for the next post. I've got a picture of some rays swimming in another large pool in the aquarium and I'll finally show you some invertebrates - sea anemones.