New England Aquarium aka: Boston Aquarium

I accidentally visited the tank on a day when there was an elementary school field trip to it and came away with more appreciation for the poor teachers than for the marine life. Everywhere I went there were kids crowding around the glass windows, shoving each other, yelling and often banging on the glass. At the aquatic petting exhibit, there was a large sign that read “do not remove fish from water” but it only served to highlight the poor job that US schools do with respect to literacy. The aquarium itself is quite good though and, had I not been to the bigger one in Monterey just last year, it would have been an amazing experience despite being overrun by hordes of kids.

Does anybody else remember Hoover, the talking seal? Truly amazing! You can read about him here:

http://www.neaq.org/scilearn/kids/hooveronly.html

There’s a long time connection between Boston and Nova Scotia, Canada. I mean, first off, we’re pretty close, being only up the coast and around the corner a little bit. Nova Scotia provides the Christmas tree every year for the city of Boston as gratitude for their support during the Halifax Explosion. Bostonians travel here, we travel there…

I first went to the New England Aquarium on a school trip to compete in a music competition. I was dining in their restaraunt, and this older gentleman sat next to my friends and I. We all began to chat, and he immediately noticed we were not from the area – We told him we were from Nova Scotia, and his reaction was, ”...Nova Scotia? Is that part of Canada or is that a country?”, we were all a little surprised by that! Then as we began to talk more and more, he thought all Canadian stereotypes were true – I managed to convince him that my mom is a professional hockey player and my dad works at an ice processing plant. :3

When you are there, go see the Sea Lion show. They train a couple of lions to do tricks. I was lucky and got picked out of the crowd to come down to the lion, and he gave me a high five. :) It was so cool.

The New England Aquarium is worth visiting while in Boston. It is kind of expensive at about $20/person for general admission, which is not a whole lot of content, since we were able to see everything available in an hour.

They have a several-story-high continous aquarium with a spiral walking area around it, which is really cool. There’s an absolutely gigantic sea-turtle in there too, with divers around feeding the fish.

There’s an exhibit dedicated to jellyfish, but that didn’t keep my attention for long. They also have the obligatory penguins, which are available in abundance, and are always entertaining.