In which we went to the Georgia Aquarium

I took the boys to the Georgia Aquarium while we were in Atlanta.  We spent almost the whole day there, and saw the whole place.  It was amazing.  Fantastic.  We saw so many unbelievable things!  That place was worth the trip down to Atlanta all by itself.

Here are the boys outside of the aquarium with a dolphin statue painted with an Atlanta Falcons jersey, and signed by the players from the team. Connor loved this. There were a good dozen other dolphin statues painted with other themes, but they didn't pay any attention to the others.

One of the most amazing exhibits inside is the Ocean Voyager exhibit.  It is HUGE!  Huge enough for four whale sharks and four manta rays.  Just in case this doesn't impress you, whale sharks are the largest fish on the planet.  They can grow to be as big as three school buses!



This one isn't quite that big. It's only the size of a single school bus. Connor already knew that the whale shark was the biggest fish in the world, so he was very impressed when we saw these.



These manta rays are each about the size of an SUV. Their wing spans are about 15 feet wide.

Also in this tank are some grouper.  I had no idea how big grouper are.  These ones are apparently "small" grouper!





One of the best things about this particular visit to the aquarium was that Connor is reading everything these days.  He was reading all of the signs all by himself this time.  It was so fabulous to hear him read the names of the fish that we were looking at to his little brother.  I was so proud.

This video is from the Tropical Diver exhibit.  I never feel like I can catch the beautiful colors of tropical fish in photographs, but they show up pretty well in the video.

Longhorn Cowfish

Red Piranha

Albino Alligators 

I think my favorite thing we saw was the Comb Jelly. I have never seen anything like it before. I didn't even know that they existed. A photo would not have done this animal justice, so I took a video instead.

Besides all this, we also saw two different types of otters, beluga whales, African penguins and the Dolphin Tales show.

Oh, the Dolphin Tales show.  We sat in the fourth row, which is the first row behind the splash show.  It was magical.  Simply magical.  There was a charming prince in a light up cape who sang with this amazing voice, there were evil sea monsters that sank his boat, mermaids that swam with the dolphins, and a big fight to defeat the sea monsters.  People were diving and flipping and riding the dolphins, who were jumping and flipping; there were special effects and lights and water sprays everywhere.  It was incredible.  The boys loved it, as did I.

The moral of this story is:  go forth to the Georgia Aquarium and be wowed.