I’ve been a member of the Monterey Bay Aquarium for more than 20 years now, which means that I’m often disappointed when I visit other aquaria. Perhaps they don’t have a very good variety of critters on display; or their tanks may seem too small and barren for their inmates; or their displays may be jazzy but lacking in educational value.
I’d heard good things about the aquarium in Newport, but as I walked through the doors of the Oregon Coast Aquarium and paid my $14.95 admission, I tried to keep my expectations low. They’re a much smaller operation, I kept reminding myself. They haven’t been in business as long. They don’t have the endowments that the Monterey Bay Aquarium has. Don’t expect miracles.
The woman who sold me my ticket said that the sea otter feeding would be in 15 minutes, and the sea lion feeding 30 minutes after that, and pointed me towards their enclosures. I went out into a courtyard and wandered around with my mouth hanging open, delighted by the naturalistic setting the aquarium’s builders had created.
They had sculpted stacks and arches and sea caves like those of Oregon’s shoreline, and tucked the enclosures into this wild-feeling setting. A cluster of people gathered around a window marked the sea otter’s territory, and I moved in close to admire two of their sleek specimens dashing through the water to catch seafood tossed to them by a pair of keepers. The otter feeding was over quickly -- it isn’t a narrated deal like the one at Monterey -- and after a clicking a few photos of their underwater acrobatics I moved on.
I ducked through an arch into a small darkened cave and found a giant octopus curled in an upper corner of its tank, its tentacles furling and unfurling as it slept.
I ducked through another arch and found myself looking down on a pool with three fat harbor seals snoozing on the sculpted rocks around it. Walking around the rock mass, I found large and small windows tucked away where I could spy on the inhabitants both above and under the water. From another angle, I glimpsed the tail and back fins of a harbor seal that was standing on its head underwater.
Then I entered the sea lion zone, where three of the sleek pinnipeds flashed past the underwater window, zooming around in anticipation of their feeding. The harbor seals approached slowly from the other direction; a volunteer standing by to answer questions said that the harbor seals had been fed already, but would lurk in the background, hoping for an extra scrap or two.
The same keepers that had fed the sea otters appeared on the damp fake-rock deck of the pinniped enclosure, and all hell broke loose. The sea lions began charging through the water this way and that, flipping, slapping up against the thick glass of the windows, zooming out of sight, and flying back. The surface of the water foamed and churned, and I laughed, thinking it seemed more like a shark feeding frenzy than a sea lion show! A keeper barked a few commands, and the trio of sea lions split up. The two small ones dashed over to balance side-by-side on a boulder and follow the commands of one keeper. The huge male leapt onto another boulder and saluted his keeper by bringing his right forefin to his forehead. He was rewarded with laughs from the crowd and -- more important to him, I’m sure -- a fish from his keeper. He proceeded through a repertoire of waves, leaps, barks, dives, front tumbles, back flips, splashes on command, and kissing the glass in front of visitors. The show culminated in a kiss on the cheek of his keeper and a magnificent backflip off a high rock that raised a small tidal wave in the enclosure. I was so enthralled by the big guy’s antics that I barely glanced at the two smaller sea lions, and only wish I could have stayed for the afternoon feeding to concentrate on them.
I left the courtyard and wandered through the temporary exhibit, which highlights some of the odder-looking inhabitants of the ocean and discusses how they’ve evolved and what advantages their oddities might give them.
Then I found a room with a display of fish-print art. Fish prints are created by taking a dead specimen of a fish, applying ink to it, and pressing it onto a sheet of paper, kind of like a big rubber stamp. Artists use different colors and get some amazing details of scales, fins, and other structures. I’m normally not crazy about fish prints -- there’s something that kind of creeps me out about using a dead fish as a stamp -- but these were exceptionally beautiful and I found myself admiring them. They led me right to the mouth of the aquarium’s undersea tunnels, acrylic tubes that bisect room-sized tanks.
I stepped into the first one and was surrounded by sea life -- small bait fish clustering at the top, bigger fish swimming alongside me and right over my head. You walk through three sections of tunnels, one of which has you surrounded by sharks! A section of the floor of one tunnel was also acrylic, and it was quite a kick to be able to look down between my feet and see a halibut that must have weighed 100 pounds lying on the sandy floor beneath me.
One of the other visitors said she had come to the aquarium when it first opened and the entire floor of each tunnel had been acrylic, with water and critters underneath, but so many people were afraid to walk on it that the aquarium had to put in carpeting!
There was more to see, and plenty I would have enjoyed going back and seeing again, but I was up against my time limit...but of course I had to stop in the marvelous gift shop before leaving, where I treated myself to two new tee-shirts with great sea-life designs, and found a beautiful print that I now have to find room for on my crowded office wall.
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