last fourth of july weekend, i willingly faced holiday traffic and drove down to monterey to meet up with becky george in order to finally explore the monterey aquarium. despite the high price of admission and screaming kids, it was worth the experience for the photos i took below. the sea otters and penguins were adorable. the giant fish and sharks were impressively sized. the stingrays that you could pet were scared and annoyed with all the kids' hands reaching into their tank.
i especially enjoyed watching this yellow fish which seemed to just sit there and mouth "hello". mmm...sashimi...i'm just kidding!
but the main reason that i wanted to go was to see the jellyfish and i wasn't disappointed. luckily, i could tune out everyone else and it just seemed like the jellyfish were noiselessly floating in space. it was very elegant and ballet-like. my favorite is this one below...the stinging sea nettle jellyfish. this is just one of what seemed like hundreds floating in the one tank together...almost in unison.
the purple striped jellyfish seemed more acrobatic, but maybe that was because it's tail was a lot longer and it seemed like it was doing backbends and cartwheels.
the moon jelly, which seemed like a ufo because it had no long tail with which to entrap its prey.
next stop...portland, oregon!
