One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Freakin’ Huge Fish

I’ll begin this post with my usual refrain of “Sorry for not posting yada yada yada.” Been a little busy. One of the things that we have done lately is go to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta (the largest in the world). Perhaps you have seen Katie’s post about our trip, no?



Thanks to Katie’s brother and his family (who bought us the tickets) we headed off on a day trip to ATL this last Saturday (11/4) with our friends Adam and Sarah. Now, for those of you who know me well know that there are many things that give me the willies, but if there’s ONE thing that REALLY freaks me out, it’s sharks. Now when I say “really freaks me out” I mean it. Here are some examples:

1) Exhibit A
2) While sitting in a theater in Florida with my friends Billy and Jeremy (Cap’n HQ), they forced me to stay in my seat during a trailer for Deep Blue Sea rather than flee the theater.
3) I didn’t actually make it through the trailer of Open Water. Even with the eyes closed, I had to leave the theater until the trailer was over.
4) The same way a picture of a snake will freak people out, I can actually break into sweats at a picture of a Great White.
5) While contemplating the plane trip to Africa, I would freak myself out with thoughts of plane crashes over the oceans. I breathed a sigh of relief at the realization that, if a crash would occur, I would likely die in it and not be stranded in the ocean and then subsequently eaten by sharks.
6) For a while, before any other thing, I began my nightly prayers with a request that God please never let me be eaten by sharks (This is not only true, but this was only about a year ago).

I have really narrowed it down to Great Whites. Other sharks can still get to me, but it’s Great Whites that immediately hit the panic switch. They’re just freakin’ evil and serve no purpose. (And I’m gonna head you off at the pass, Paula. I don’t want any rebuttals about “keystone species” and such. This is my blog. Sharks are evil here.) However, I can easily sit through Jaws and I love aquariums. Oh, the irony.

But there are no Great Whites at the Geogia AQ. So with just a little trepidation on my part, and a lot of sick curiosity on the part of the others, we headed off to the AQ. “Will he have a meltdown at the shark tank?” There was the distinct possibility. The tank has two Whale Sharks, the largest of the shark species (but they eat plankton so they’re our friends). Read the stats on the link. The one’s at the AQ aren’t even that big at all.

Well, the short answer is, NO, I did not. The AQ was great with a fantastic design, and the tank with the whale sharks? Amazing. That one tank has 6,200,000 gallons of water in it! There was some statistic about how many school buses could fit in it, but I don’t remember it, but rest assured it was a lot, and we ain’t talkin’ about short buses here either, folks.



So here are a few shots and some videos. This first one is in an exhibit where a tank actually sprawled above you as you walked throughout it. It was cleverly designed and very impressive. {WARNING: All these videos have loud crowd sounds, so turn down the volume, as there isn’t anything to really hear but noise.]





This next clip is of the Beluga whale tank, which I think was my favorite exhibit. Amazing. They have five whales at the AQ.





And finally, here is a clip of the aforementioned whale sharks (and a gagillion other fish). I will forewarn you that in the moment of filming, I forgot that I needed to keep the camera at just one angle, so for a few seconds the shot turns sideways before it corrects itself. Hey, what can I say? This ain’t National Geographic.)