Our bus dropped us off at National Museum of Marine Science and Technology. Sounds impressive, no? Well it's actually more of a research center. Basically a couple of large rooms filled with people who take care of various sized fish tank filled with various types of marine creatures. It's also not open to the public. We were lucky to have a tour for "academic purposes."
The first ones that we learned about were giant Grouper. I don't know why, but I was a bit freaked out looking at them. I guess I was imagining what swimming with them would be like. Random fact: all of the grouper fish poop at the same time when they know they're about to eat. They are storing the extra nutrients they need up until the last moment. Gross but impressive. Jean really wanted to see this phenomena, but our guide said they had already eaten in the morning. Poop.
I found Nemo.
He was hiding in an anemone, just as in the movie. The workers at the museum are training these fish to be released in the wild again, so they try to scare them into hiding. Sounds cruel, but it's a good thing to be afraid of humans in the sea. Nemo doesn't see human hands as things that feed him anymore.
The only creature I found was this tiny crabby.
Other classmates found sea stars, sea cucumbers, barnacles, different fish.
Next stop was the coast. We searched for some of the marine animals that we learned about in small tide pools. With the sun beating down, the low tide felt great. Everyone received a dorky-looking pair of water shoes and we tried not to slip on the algae as we navigated around the tide pools.
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