Saturday, April 21, 2012

Maui

This a photo taken at the Maui Ocean Center. The main building hosted a 54 foot acrylic tunnel through which visitors could walk. It was so neat -- the fish were on both sides of the tunnel, and crossed one to the other by swimming overhead. It was the nearest thing to diving underwater that I'll ever have. At the top of the photo you can see the underside of a spotted eagle ray, and we could see his gills opening and closing. I found it hard to photograph because everything was constantly moving.
I highly recommend this center to any of you traveling to Hawaii. It isn't a showboat-y exhibit like s Sea World, but "a place of respect for the area marine life". We thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh yeah, and there are no cetaceans (whales and dolphins) they are prohibited from captivity by the County of Maui. All the other fish and critters are from the area of Maui.
Bumper sticker for the day: "Of course I can do it! The question is, Do I want to?!"

2 comments :

SkippyMom said...

I have been in one of those tunnels in South Carolina and although it probably wasn't as spectacular as the one in Maui - I can say it was absolutely breathtaking to watch sharks and such swim by you and over top of you.

In fact I got so excited the first time I saw the belly of a shark go over my head I reached out into [what I thought] was our crowd of family, shook my daughter's arm and excitedly turned her around and pointed up, exclaiming "OMGosh! OMGosh! Do you SEE that?"

To bad I grabbed a stranger instead of one of our 5 kids or my husband. You would think with that many warm bodies the odds would've been in favor. heehee But no-o-o-o.

And let's just say, after she snatched her arm back, the woman let me know how she REALLY didn't appreciate being touched by people she didn't know. Truly an accident, but I made sure to temper my enthusiasm after that and have a kid close by I knew belonged to us. I was mortified by her reaction. ooops

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend and are getting a chance to relax. Hugs my friend. :)

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I've been looking for blog posts about the Maui Ocean Center to feature on our site. If you're interested, you can drop me a line at Kate (at) Dwellable (.com)

Thanks!