Sunday, June 12, 2016

Visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium

This weekend I went to Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA). We needed to take a long drive to get to Monterey Bay. On the way, we stopped at an elephant seal rookery. Many of the elephant seals were shedding their fur, others were sleeping, and others even scooched along the sand with their belly! There was even a female digging a hole.



It took all day to drive (not including the fact that we stopped at a taco stand- yum). By the time we made it, it was sunset. My Dad and I went out on the beach with our nets to see if we could catch anything. There was nothing on the beach to catch.



The next day we went to MBA. I created a collage out of the pictures I took at the aquarium. I created it on Picmonkey.com.









































The largest picture is a sea otter. Sea otters eat shellfish and break the shells open using rocks. The picture to the far right top is a picture of a school of sea nettles.  The picture below the jellyfish is filled with strawberry anemones (u-ne-mo-nees).  How many anemones do you think there are? The picture below the anemones is crabs crawling all over a rock. The picture left to the crab is a giant pacific octopus against the glass. It gives you a great look at an octopus' suction cups. The bottom picture left to the octopus is a garden of garden eels. A garden eel will burrow underground and stay inside a hole. Finally, above the garden eels there is one of the largest tanks in the world. It's the open ocean tank! A couple of open ocean creatures live in this huge tank like hammerhead sharks, yellowfin tuna, mackerel, mahi mahi, and even a huge school of 9,998 sardines (it started with 10,000, but the shark ate two).

Afterward, it took a whole day to drive home. But we got to drive along the coast. I read most of the way. The trip was an interesting experience.