| Acquario di Genova |
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| Written by Scha |
| Thursday, 20 August 2009 01:00 |
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I felt very sleepy today, but I got up anyway since we were going to Genova, which is almost 3 hours of driving from Novara.
Even Dani was sleepy due to excessive gaming last night. We brought bottles of drinks, a tube of Pringles, and a can of sweet corn as emergency food in case I starve inside the car.
This city reminds me of Penang where my family is in Malaysia. It has hillsides and you can see beaches from up there. The weather was extremely hot. I was getting grumpy when the closest parking lots to the aquarium were full, so we had to park the car way far, under the sun.
(I will update my personal expressions and story of the city later)
Jellyfish is the first thing I saw after entering the building. This type of jellyfish is called Phyllorhiza punctata. Since it was pretty hard to capture a moving jellyfish, I recorded them as a movie clip.
There was also a big tube of water tank in the middle of the room. I managed to take picture of a eel called green moray popping out from a hole in a reef.
Next, we went to see seals. There were two of them, and of the species Harbor Seals. They swam so fast, so I had to capture them in a video as well.
After that, we passed by a tank of sharks, with a few fish of different kind. I couldn't take snapshots of Sandbar sharks because they were moving pretty fast. Sand tiger shark (or Grey nurse shark):
An unusual type of shark that is not written in our visitor's guide (maybe a Leopard Shark?):
The next tank has more coral reef. And inside, were some red fish known as Swallowtail Sea Perch or Anthiinae.
There was a smaller tank nearby, with underwater meadows. These meadows are called posidonia, and habitat of broad-nosed pipefish.
Dolphins tank was very interesting. I could observe them from lower and upper part.
Finally I came to my favorite part of the building; Piranhas. Surprisingly, they did NOT make any movements despite having a crowd tapping and touching the glass, which helped me taking a great picture of them.
Green sea turtle has always been one of my favorite endangered animals. I remember the times when I was around 9 years old to 10, with my grandparents, I went to Terengganu (an east coast region of Malaysia) where people mostly gathered the turtles' eggs from the beaches, and sold them in the market. No one had any idea of how less and less these creatures were becoming. Some people today even still throw plastic bags into the sea, being eaten by turtles that mistake them with jellyfish, which another reason why green turtles are facing extinction. Luckily, in Malaysia now, people don't steal their eggs anymore. Instead, the eggs are kept in a compound where it's safe to hatch, and the baby turtles will be released into the sea.
That was the first time I actually saw a living green turtle before my eyes, and how excited I was. In the same tank, there was a Queen triggerfish that tagged along almost everywhere the turtle went. The fish looked like smiling if being seen from front. In the other side of this tank, there was a pretty golden fish known as selene vomer or simply Lookdown.
And she looked down all the time, stirred a little when people passed by, and stopped moving to look down again.
Now I walked through a darker hallway, where some creatures are placed separately in smaller tanks. I didn't get to see all of them due to the crowd, but I managed to stop for a few seconds to grab a picture of antarctic cushionstars.
Sea stars always appeared in one of the beaches of southern part of Malaysia, where I lived many years ago. The biggest I captured was as large as this laptop I'm using, and could be even more. There were too many of them, some were dead because of sea birds, and some just got themselves stuck on the sand being dried under the sun. If I'm not mistaken, they have tiny legs underneath their bodies, like little worms squirming out from rotten meat. And this is why I changed my mind about bringing one home that day, since i have verminophobia.
And then, I saw a tank with a very cute gentoo penguin swimming down and up, and then disappeared. My husband Dani said there is another bigger tank up the stairs, where we can see all the penguins.
Knowing that it was vacation day, and of course, full of crowd, I couldn't get any closer than two or three human walls who were bigger than me. So, Dani who has the advantage for having long legs, went to snap a quick picture of the penguins.
Afterwards, we went up to the wooden floor where the reptiles were. From here, we could also see the lower ground tanks from upper view.
This is a green tree python. I wished I could hold it. The last snake I've held was an albino phyton, of an owner from Malacca, in front of A Famosa. The skin was so sticky and cold, and I couldn't carry the whole of it, since it was too heavy for me. Sadly I didn't have a camera with me, since I was actually going there for the stalls for some light shopping, so I didn't take a picture.
Next animal was an amphibian reptile; spider tortoise.
This tortoise walked very fast for the rest of the tortoises, but very slow for me that I could snap a picture with no blur.
This tank contains man-made lagoon, with fishes like butterflyfish. They were swimming in small groups, and in each group when one turned, the others turned as well.
I came to a smaller tank with an animal of my favorite dish; a lobster.
This mediterranean lobster had even a company at the back, another crustacean that I can't figure out the species.
There was a baby-sized crocodile, Dwarf Caiman in the tank next, accompanied by more behind and in the lower part.
The tank was pretty smudged from the inside, so no matter how hard I tried not to take a blurry picture, it still came out like that.
This time I saw more tube anemones from what I saw earlier in the first few tanks, where Swallowtail sea perch was.
Finally, we reached to a bigger room of jellyfish. Here jellyfish are placed separately depending on their species.
This one is called brown jellyfish. It swims in a very graceful way like a piece of silk being blown by gentle breeze. The one below is known as four-leaf clover jellyfish or moon jellyfish. It creates a nice four-leaf clover shape while swimming and seen from up and lower part, so I just had to capture it as a movie clip.
Also, there were cassiopea jellyfish stuck on the sand and on the glass from inside of their tank, upside down.
Banggai cardinal fish is one of the beautiful and glowing creatures in this aquarium.
They don't move so much, and fit perfectly in a small tank as a pet, which I was hoping at first before knowing that this Indonesian fish is facing extinction. I still haven't acquired information about the blue fish below, but it's really an amazing one and Dani loves it.
This fish didn't even move from that ground. Probably it likes pebbles.
In Malaysia, it's very common to find the fishes below as food, but this is the second time I've seen them alive (after the first one that was captured from a lake, temporarily kept as pet, and became our lunch).
I don't know the name in English, but it is called bawal in Malaysian. It's funny that this fish is actually an aquarium fish in Europe.
On our way out of the building, I saw a globe with forest inside.
And I don't know what that is.
Picture above is taken from outside, and you can see how many people are living in this city, based on the houses at the back.
This guy below looked like a statue.
He was being Cristoforo Colombo, and he posed differently after I put down €1 in his box down there. Poor guy, having to work like this under such hot summer heat.
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 August 2009 05:33 |
