Continuing with our tour of the incredible Monterey Bay Aquarium, we venture up to the second floor. Besides additional views of the sea otters and Kelp Forest described yesterday, we encounter a whole different set of incredible enclosures.
Open Sea is, in many ways, the complete opposite of Kelp Forest. It is long and wide instead of tall and narrow. It is dark and gloomy instead of bright and cheerful. And it is open and sparse instead of cluttered and busy. Looking at it, I realized how seldom I've actually seen an aquarium display that actually showed the open, featureless ocean instead of coral reefs or kelp forests. The curved backdrop seems invisible, making the back of the tank seem endlessly distant. The enormous tank, about one million gallons total, features a variety of large oceanic fish, including scalloped hammerheads, dolphinfish, pelagic stingrays, and, my favorite, yellowfin tuna (I have never actually seen a live tuna before, so this was a really cool experience), as well as sea turtle. The tank occasionally plays host of ocean sunfish, the giant, bizarre-looking laterally-compressed fish, but none were on display at the time of my visit (though I believe one is now, at the time of this writing - no guarantees about when you visit).
There is another famous past resident that I knew I wouldn't see. It was this tank that famously once housed Monterey Bay Aquarium's great white sharks. This is the only aquarium in the world to have successfully kept great whites for any length of time, though it has been years since one was kept here. Previous specimens were kept for a while and then released back into the wild. I can imagine how awesome it must have been to walk along the 30-meter window with the ocean's most famous predator cruising along on the other side of the glass, the white underside gleaming against the dark waters.
Other popular residents of the upper level are the seabirds, housed in two exhibits. African penguins, one of the relatively few non-native animals in the aquarium, have an exhibit with a small bubble that lets visitors pop up alongside the birds. More local seabirds - tufted puffins and common murres (the later I saw in the bay just the day before) - are nearby. The penguins are part of Splash Zone, a collection of coastal wildlife. (The aquarium is also home to the only albatrosses under human care in the country - they are not exhibit animals, but are sometimes brought out for presentations. I met them and they absolutely blew my mind). There are a variety of other satellite exhibits of smaller marine species dotted around both the upper and lower floors, with coastal natives ranging from sea cucumbers to California morays. A few small exotics, such as Banggai cardinalfish, round out the collection.
No visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium would be complete without a spin through their extensive, beautiful jelly gallery. Monterey has done pioneering work on the propagation of jellies, knowledge which has allowed these surreal ocean dwellers to become some of the most commonly (and sustainably) kept invertebrates in aquariums worldwide. I saw even more invertebrates in Tentacles, the rotational exhibit that was devoted to the octopi, squid, and cuttlefish of the world. It's so uncommon to see cephalopods other than the giant Pacific octopus, chambered nautilus, and common cuttlefish in an aquarium, so I really enjoyed the chance to see the diversity of these unique, highly intelligent creatures. A new favorite for me was my first viewing of the aptly named flamboyant cuttlefish, a tiny creature with startling pink, purple, and red coloration.
Unfortunately, what I did not get to see was the newest exhibit at MBA, which was still under construction at the time. Even more important than the exhibit halls at the aquarium is the associated research institute, which has done incredible work studying the fauna of the deepest parts of the ocean. The aquarium has just opened an exhibit gallery dedicated to deep sea marine life, featuring many species that have never previously been seen on the surface. Such an exhibit, replicated nowhere else, easily helps to cement Monterey Bay Aquarium's reputation as one of America's most incredible and unique public aquariums, and a can't-miss for the zoo enthusiast.
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