Friday, January 27, 2012

One of my happy places

There's no secret that I adore the water. I can't even count how many times I've said that I'd never be able to live (happily) in a landlocked state. I find an immeasurable amount of tranquility and sense of personal scope when I'm around water—especially large bodies of water. (No, the dripping faucet in our bathroom just doesn't quite have the same impact on me.)

Recently, our local news has showcased a baby otter pup that was born at our aquarium. Fortunately, my office is just down the street from the aquarium and I decided today was the day to visit the new pup. Never did I expect the pup's viewing window to have the crowd that it did mid-day on a weekday. It was nutty!! In addition to us gawkers, there were also two biologists parked at the window monitoring the pup and mama making sure all was going well. As I stood there watching the mama and her pup do laps around the tank (the mama was grooming the pup's tail while the pup slept), I quickly realized it was anything but an ideal photography opportunity, but I still caught a few pictures of the otters. One of the caretakers sprayed down the window to do a little cleaning, which did plenty to make a difficult photography situation even trickier. On top of that, the crowd was reflected in the viewing window; they weren't the ones I wanted pictures of.

My photos from the non-otter portion of the aquarium turned out much better. I had issues taking photos of the jellyfish; those darned things move so much that it is really tricky to get them in focus ... that and the fact they're in a tank that has constantly changing lights!!

sea anemone

I have no idea what this is, but thought it was pretty

Otter pup and her mama (Aniak)

This seal was much easier to photograph ... no line, no waiting!

jellyfish

jellyfish

diver feeding a wolf eel

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