Ocean World

We were mesmerized watching the weather roll in to Crescent City from our prime location, right on the beach. Henry and I were getting cabin fever. So while Kim continued tweaking his graphs (not a euphemism!) for his stock market trading, Henry and I set off in the rain to check out Ocean World in town.

​Henry and I love aquariums and we are always excited to discover new ones. However we are now aquarium snobs having visited the crème de la crème of aquariums in California; the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium and the highly esteemed Aquarium of the Pacific. 

Ocean World was small and a bit, as Henry would say, "budget," but had some memorable features. Henry and I are always determined to have a good time and we entered with buoyant expectation. Billed as "...more than just an aquarium; it is entertainment for the whole family," we were hopeful it was going to be a fun experience. We certainly had fun outside posing on a surfboard set against a huge mural of a giant wave!

After mooching around the store for 15 minutes waiting for our timed entrance, we were led with our group through a nondescript door to a patio area with a simulated rock tide pool where we could "pet" the starfish and observe the flowery anemones whilst being silently observed by some fibre glass statues of pirates. There was also a life size model of a smallish orca. The most interesting and authentic artifact was the whale bone pelvis that had been found washed ashore in Crescent City.  As you can see from the pics, Henry was mightily impressed. 

We were then shepherded down some concrete steps into a basement that allowed us to view two large tanks. To our right was a tank of seals and sea lions and to our left, a tank of rays, leopard sharks, sturgeon and striped bass. The tanks were presented through a series of large windows that created a dramatic cinematic effect. The tanks were clearly very old, not very well maintained and quite small for the number of marine mammals and large fish living there. The sharks, rays and fish circled mindlessly. We padded about on the carpeted flooring between the two tanks, watching the sea creatures watching us. In the middle was a smaller tank titled "Sandy Bottom" containing local rockfish, Dungeness crab, spiny dogfish and silver and rainbow surfperch. In the hushed environment, time seemed to stand still. It was a little unnerving. Thankfully, a small child in our group shrieked and that seemed to waken us from our trance.

We then made our way up and out of the basement, plodding up some more concrete steps and were informed we were going to have a  real treat; the opportunity to "pet" a shark. Woo hoo! I wiggled my eyebrows at Henry. Henry rolled his eyes back at me. He  was suitably impressed and tried very hard to conceal his excitement. He succeeded.

We entered a room with a shallow pool and a single shark circling. I immediately thought, "We're going to need a bigger tank." The shark was a large and rather docile leopard shark and we all obediently stuck our hands into the water after being reassured with the good news that "no one has lost a finger yet." 

Henry and I then had fun mucking around pretending to be eaten by a great white shark. There was a fibreglass model and we took turns pretending to be gobbled up by the shark. Our death cries began to disturb the children on the tour and so we stopped.

The tour continued with a visit to the outside portion of the seal and sea lion tank. We noticed it was still chucking it down with rain so we stood watching in a covered breezeway with our hoods up blowing warm air into our hands. Our tour guide, a slip of a girl, who was clearly not Sea World trained, fetched a bucket of fish and threw some to the lovely mammals.

The two seals and one sea lion were clearly rescues as they were a motley crew. Scarred skin, missing eyes, withered whiskers and bitten fore flippers were the marks of these rescued mammals. It was really kinda heartbreaking. Henry and I exchanged sad faces. No words necessary.

We watched the "grand finale" as these brave little animals slid down a slide, jumped at a ball hung over the pool and waved at us in exchange for a few fish. 

We exited.

We love animal encounters, and we did have some giggles, but this visit felt just a little bit sad on a wet Friday afternoon.