Monterey Bay Aquarium II

I'm back with more aquarium photos today.  When we visited a few weeks ago, we skipped over several of the more kid-friendly exhibits.  So if you're interested in them, you will have to check those out on your own.  We often jump from the otters straight to the Outer Bay/Open Sea exhibit.  

Anchovies welcome you and point the way:

Several years ago, the Outer Bay exhibit was the new hit at the aquarium.  This is a one million gallon tank with much larger animals, like the 880-pound sunfish, sea turtles, and huge bluefin tuna.  This exhibit has also been home to a number of great white sharks, but these guys don't stay on exhibit long (as they grow up and start killing tankmates!)

Galapagos shark instead:

The Outer Bay exhibit is pretty dark, but if you look closely, you can see the hammerhead shark at the bottom swimming through the school of fish.  The fish are quick to get out of his way.

The aquarium has a new exhibit right now called The Jellies Experience.  It's a hippie peace-love-drugs shout-out to the 70s, which doesn't really fit with the feel of the rest of the aquarium, but the additional space houses many new species of jellies that are pretty stunning.

These are about the size of a golf ball but move faster than a lot of the other jellies:

Moon Jelly

I think the most unusual sea animal is the leafy sea dragon, though.  These sea horse-like animals look no different than the seagrass growing next to them!



And that's how we wrapped up our most recent visit. 

I highly recommend a stop here if you find yourself in the area!