Monterey Part II: The Monterey Bay Aquarium

I have never seen so many giant strollers in one place. I have never seen so many families with terribly-behaved children pay good money to eat in a full service restaurant when they could eat with the other terrible children across the way in self-service. (Honestly, if your child is going to throw food at me, you could at least apologize...) That was just a rant. I recently discussed my feelings about zoos and aquariums in relation to the CalAcademy.

Seafood Watch

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is super famous, because it is awesome, and also created the Seafood Watch Pocket Guide with which I hope you are familiar. If you are not veggie or vegan or like Matt, a meatatarian who despises seafood, you should check this out. Please make sure you are not eating bad fishies. This is very important for your health and for the ecosystem.

Sea Otters

The Aquarium also does some other awesome things. It houses 5 of the cutest sea otters ever. All of them are unreleasable for one reason or another. At least one of them, in fact, has toxo, which I recently learned about at NASW. Accordingly, one of the Aquarium's educational campaigns is to teach people that even outdoor cats should have litter boxes. When cats pick up toxo from rats and then poop, water carries some of that toxo-fied poop into waterways and eventually into the ocean, where tiny sea creatures pick it up, and then pass it on to bigger creatures like sea otters. Sea otters with toxo cannot survive in the wild, but they can live in captivity if medicated. So if you have an outdoor cat (or ahem, monkey), you are supposed to train it to poop in an outdoor litter box, and then send the poop to a landfill in a bag where it cannot escape.

Three of the resident sea otters also serve as surrogate moms to orphaned pups. Pups who have lost their mothers are brought to the aquarium, where a resident sea otter teaches it to forage and other such things that sea otters need to know. It also provides maternal comfort. The surrogate moms do such a good job that the pups can then be released back into the wild. Isn't that the cutest thing ever? See a success story here.

Save the Oceans

The Aquarium also helps provide other opportunities for people to contribute to ocean health and sustainability, and can keep you informed about specific issues that require action.

Other Education

Throughout the Aquarium, there are tips about how you can make a difference. I learned not to stand on things near tidepools that probably are alive. Although Matt and I learned our lesson and stepped carefully post-Aquarium visit, we saw many others smashing cute little creatures unknowlingly.

Pretty Things

From the jellyfish to the rays to the river otters, there were some phenomenal things on display. I may have had to fight children to see them, but see them I did.

And the Cons...

I did have some concerns, such as the sign that assured me I could touch the rays because they had had their stingers removed, and the volunteers who told a guest that they moved creatures out of the touch pools when they showed signs of stress. Although I did enjoy touching the starfish, I certainly don't want to contribute to its elevated stress levels. Which brings me back to the question; is it okay for some animals to be, in a way, sacrified, so more people can care about the oceans and the creatures and learn how to protect them? I don't know where to draw the line.