To my right, there is a small exhibit on different types of hunting tools used by peoples in northern tribes that fished by punching holes through sheets of ice. One of the instruments is simply labeled, “Inuit seal hook,” which is a block of wood with three barbs of metal maliciously curving out the tip. I imagine some kind of eskimo swinging this around on the end of a rope until sinking it into the flesh of their prey. The next item on display is a walrus tusk drinking mug. Rather than a tusk, it appears to be made out of the jawbone of a walrus. Old, yellow teeth rim the top of the cup, as if they are ready to take a vengeful bite out of the drinker.
The first fish we see are paddlefish—small, grey, gaping fish with flat, dorkish protrusions sticking out of their face. They slowly roll by, opening and closing their toothless mouths before deciding to change direction with a single, rapid jerk of their tails. There are at least fifteen of them gliding around in a massive tank that features a rocky seafloor with sand. Off to the side of the tank there is an interactive panel that describes how the paddlefish find their food. Apparently, the “paddle” that sticks out of their face is used to detect electrical signals from their main source of food—plankton.
Wicked.
Alex and I walk around a corner that leads to a more informational section about the ocean and its inhabitants. A huge plaque labeling the different depths of the ocean with names such as ‘Sunlight Zone,’ ‘Twilight Zone,’ and ‘The Abyss.’ An outline of a humpback whale arcs out of the top layer. A giant squid makes its way across the ‘Midnight Zone,’ and it’s pretty scary, but what concerns me more is that there are three more unnamed levels below ‘The Abyss.’ The water pressure at the lowest point in the ocean is eight tons per square inch. Our next exhibit contains a smaller tank with the unfortunately named “lumpfish,” a gnarled goblin of an aquatic creature. Black dots crawl down the side of it, ending at its grumpy face. A small television screen by the tank tells me that it has some sort of suction cups to keep itself attached to rocks during strong riptides.
The rest of the exhibit is a whorl of kelp, sand, glass and fins. There’s an underwater tube that lets us walk through a colony of minnows 4,000 strong. They twist and flicker over the tube, and we watch in amazement as they snap in different directions, following one another past goliath groupers and carpenter sharks. One of the sharks comes to rest on top of the tube, and it looks like it stretches the length of two people. A staff member leans against the wall of the tube, and I ask her about the shark above us. She looks up, and tells us that the shark is female. I look up, too, and spend the next five seconds of my life staring at shark genitals. It’s weird, but I guess that it’s something that not many people can say that they’ve done in their lives. We continue through the exhibit.
