As I mentioned before, the New England Aquarium was a short walk away from my hotel. I couldn’t not go there. Or at least I couldn’t come up with an excuse to avoid the place. I stuck with the “general admission” ticket; there wasn’t anything about the special movie presentation that interested me. As it happens, I can’t even remember what it was….

The literal centerpiece of the NEA is a giant tank containing a representation of a tropical coral reef. It’s listed as being 23 feet tall (or deep), but it looks a LOT taller thanks to some cool design that has a ramp encircling it. The open top of the tank is just below floor level at the top of the ramp, and the bottom of the tank is around waist level at the ramp’s lower end. I actually guessed at 40 feet for the depth / height of the tank!

It’s not all fish tanks; the ground floor has a pair of penguin colonies (African and Rockhopper) which are not behind glass or cages – but far enough below floor level so you can’t get close enough to bother them (and they can’t get close enough to bite you). If you go at the right time, you’ll see NEA staff doing maintenance on the display / facility – and talking about what they are doing (including raising penguins in Boston). The individual penguins have names, and you can tell them apart by colored bands around a flipper. There’s also a Shark & Ray Touching Tank, and a couple of seals out in the back in the fresh air.

Speaking of which, there are probably still some animal lovers out there who consider zoos (and their aquarian subgroup) to be Evil Mean Nasty Animal Prisons that do nothing for animals or ecology. While that may have been the case decades ago, and could still be true for places like “Billy Bob’s Animal Safari”, pretty much every zoo worthy of the name has figured out that sick and morose animals do not bring in the visitors with their dollars. So they take good care of their charges, and are responsible environmental stewards.

The NEA’s three seals, for example, are all “rescues” that failed rehabilitation back into the wild. Other signage tells visitors that some of the tropical Atlantic fish were found far to the north of their usual habitat, having gotten caught in the Gulf Stream, and are unlikely to make it back before they perish in the New England winter. And they have a program where they work with locals in the Amazon Basin to rescue fish stranded by floods. These animals would very much likely be dead if they weren’t on display. They also have their own rescue program for sea turtles that get stuck in or on Cape Cod.

There is, of course, plenty of signage everywhere reminding visitors about habitat destruction due to global warming, and the need to protect even the local environment.

They work with other researchers on various projects, too. An outdoor display describes a program at MIT that tweaks satellite imagery to monitor the distribution of plankton in waters off Massachusetts – but they need to remember that spell check isn’t perfect….

I’m pretty sure the ocean has plenty of those wooden things used to carry lots of boxes, but….