Monterey Bay Aquarium

It is said that we all come originally from the Sea, and that one day, like the racing waters of the streams, we will all return. For we all live downstream. That is why we must pay careful attention to the Sea, for our well-being depends ultimately upon the health of this ancient water. Perhaps we feel this way because, not only is our blood chemically similar to seawater, but our bloodstreams surge with the same ancient rhythms. That is why it is so important for us to stay in touch with this ever-present miracle that we dwell beside, and stay educated in its subtleties. Nowhere is our great interconnection with all life better represented than in the web of the Sea, and nowhere is this great web better displayed and described than in the halls of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The aquarium is, first of all, a fun trip, but the things seen and the lessons learned run much deeper. You get to put your hands in the salty water, and touch the creatures that dwell in the watery realms. You are allowed to know many creatures that we are used to seeing from above, or from on the shore; and get to know them from underneath, and from next to them, separated from the sea's blue surge by a mere wall of glass. Into dark undersea caverns you dive and tunnel, communing with giant octopi, locking eyes with cuttlefish who stare you down with their ancient eyes and prehistoric wisdom. You watch live sand dollars in their sandy beds, and sea anemones waving their fluorescent feelers. Pelagic barnacles, attached to far-floating buoys, filter off tiny creatures that you cannot even see, through delicate combs. Sea turtles drift, and jellyfish spin and bob like strings of lights dancing before your astonished eyes. The black depths of the deep Monterey Canyon are revealed to you, full of astonishing creatures that gleam and glow with their own light. And in the outer bay, endless schools of tuna and mackerel and sardines and sharks perform their primeval round dance, ceaselessly circling, hypnotizing you with their bright and glittering armor. It is appropriate, that on the very spot where ol' "Doc" Ricketts, who was memorialized by Steinbeck in "The Log from the Sea of Cortez," once collected tidepool creatures and studied them in a small, makeship lab, that there should be erected a great memorial to the Sea, and to its miraculous and multifarious creatures. And that on a street made famous during the early years of this century for its Sardine Canneries, again described by Steinbeck, as "a stink, and a noise," that we should be graced with the sight of living, swimming sardines, and reminded that the sea is all about life, and not death. How fabulous it is that there is a place, where families can voyage to together, and learn all about the great dynamic body of water that we all make our homes beside. And that we have a resource that explains and illuminates this great mystery, the mystery that we feel when we listen to