Aquariums

 One fact about me is that I'm a huge animal lover. I always have been since a kid and I would always ask her if I could have animals all the time. If I wasn't working with kids, I would want to work with animals. 

Over the last 2 weeks I have visited 2 different aquariums. I am typically more of a land animal type of girl but fish are cool too! 

June 10th my boyfriend and I took a trip to Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut. We've been wanting to go to Mystic for a while and we finally found a good weekend that worked for the both of us. We drove down to Mystic and stayed one night and 2 days. 

I've always heard good things about Mystic and I know they have beluga whales which I was really excited for because I've never seen them before!

We walked across the street to the aquarium and the belugas were the first things we saw. They were amazing and so beautiful. Such a unique type of whale and they have a beautiful white color. We got there just in time for their feeding and training session which was so cool to watch. There were 6 belugas in the tank and 6+ trainers around feeding and working with them. The whales were getting refreshers on all the tricks they know like how to speak, open their mouths, roll over, etc. It was so impressive to me that you can actually train whales. 

https://apnews.com/article/canada-travel-whales-business-science-3d94457dad4da1a4f769d505958158a1 has a great article on how they imported their beluga whales from Canada!

After the beluga whales we kept walking and saw different types of seals which were very cute. We walked around inside for a little until it was time for the sea lion show! 

The sea lion show was amazing too! The seals were so well behaved and so well trained. Better trained than most dogs I know! They were doing all sorts of fun tricks and the crowed loved it. 

Overall it was a cute little aquarium and I would recommend going there if you haven't been already. 

Another aquarium I just recently went to was the Aquarium of Niagara at Niagara Falls in New York. This aquarium was small but had a lot of great animals inside. 

One of my favorite fish recently has been the clown fish. The type of fish in Finding Nemo! I just think they are so cute and pretty and I want to take them all home! This aquarium also had a seal show with their harbor seals. It wasn't as impressive as Mystic's show, but it's still fun to see the seals out and about doing their tricks. 

Another one of my favorite aspects of any aquarium is their touch tanks. Most touch tanks have stingrays, star fish, hermit crabs, and sometimes even sharks. This one had stingrays and sharks. 

Sometimes I think of aquariums and zoos to be a double edged sword. In the sense that I love seeing these beautiful animals that I probably wouldn't be able to see anywhere else, but at the same time they shouldn't be held in captivity. I do love the concept of rehabbing and then releasing, but I understand when animals can't be released.