Salt Lake City Fish

On a whim we decided to check out the Salt Lake City Aquarium, in Sandy. My GPS too us straight there, even if I did try and out smart it by avoiding a few left hand turns (read: the tricky turns when you drive on wrong side of road, and have to cross 4 lanes of traffic!). We arrived there soon enough, and you'll have to forgive me if I was a bit sceptical. The building looked like a giant blue warehouse surrounded by parking lots, and there was a school bus there too. But for $8 each… why not.

All fears were gone as soon as we entered the aquarium; it is really, really well done. Beats SF hands down in many areas. The exhibits are well thought out, with informative but concise (and quite stylish) info panels. The tanks are more like little windows into other worlds. The electric eel has a zap-o-meter above it, which lights up from green to red as it hunts for food, depending on whether it's search-shocking or stun-shocking.

And the exhibits… wow! The very first thing we were greeted by was a large harmless looking corner tank. Peering under the water we could see a bit of a tail, something like an eel. Following it up… OH MY GAWD! The tail quickly grew into something thigh-diameter, and about 20 feet long. This was an Anaconda, and by George I hope I never meet one! The other fish in the tank seem strangely unconcerned by it..?!

Mr Anaconda… that central part is thigh-sized, with just the tiniest little bit of head sticking out.

Opposite that there was something that made the Anaconda look almost friendly… it was a dimly lit tank of fish that just loomed there, hanging in the water, their large bulging eyes staring at you from their stumpy ugly faces. And they just sat their… waiting… these were the piranhas.

Piranhas waiting for their next meal. Now imagine a whole dimly lit tank of these dark blue monsters, hanging their, not moving. VERY creepy.

The piranha tank was scary, so we moved on to the next one, which was heaps better…

This was some kind of mini crocodile… from the croco-family at least. He was just a cute we guy, sitting there smiling away at us.

Next up, the electric eel… also a friendly looking critter…

When we saw him he was just sitting there pretending to be a bit of weed, but shortly afterwards something excited him and he went crazy with the zapping, so all over the aquarium we could here pop-pop-pop as the zap-o-meter registered his zaps.

After these we were almost glad to see a tank full of stingrays, whizzing around over the stones and each other, moving very gracefully.

 

Not strictly fishy… but there was a gigantic tarantula that preyed on birds:

That was the end of the fascinating – if not plain scary – South American exhibit. Next up there was a giant circular tank with sharks zooming around. Not quite as cool as the walk-through tunnels of San Fran, but pretty cool all the same. We were now in the regular aquarium, full of interesting brightly coloured fish.

 

Mr Claws; this fellow was massive, each claw was about 50cm long! Wouldn't want him to nip my toes.

Then I saw something very cool: an octopus! The ones at San Fran were so shy nobody could see them, but this guy wasn't as shy. He was very dimly lit, and there was strictly no flash-photography allowed, so these are all ISO2500, F1.8, 1/15s shots… i.e. VERY dark. The poor d90 & 50mm prime did a good job, all things considered.

 

You can just make out his eye in some of those shots. For the most part he was just a giant pulsating writhing jumble of suckers. I was utterly fascinated :-)

Around the corner they had a whole tank of moray eels and other bitey things; I got to see them being fed and boy were they vicious! Almost as soon as the meat entered the water they'd be on the chase and within seconds snatch it off the hook. Another tank had some weird fish that looked like some kind of boat or missile.

 

There was a section on trout and salmon, nothing unusual for us Kiwis. Seems I was still shooting at wide apertures and so mr fish here has a beautiful depth of field.

The final part was the touching-tank, which was inundated with school kids, though we did get to touch a stingray. I wonder if they were really sting rays though because one kid reached in and grabbed the tail of a passing ray, which is right where the stinger is supposed to be. Plus can you imagine the litigation nightmare putting a "please touch" sign above a pen full of lethal fish would be?!

We went through the South American exhibit again because it was just so well done, then headed back to SLC… subject of another story.