The main attraction in this city was the Monterey Bay Aquarium, considered one of the best in the world.
The aquarium itself is located on a street called Cannery Row, which was historically full of canneries (factories specializing in canned fish). In fact, the aquarium used to be a sardine cannery itself.
The following are just pictures of the various fish that we saw. They seem to specialize in keeping particularly exotic and beautiful species of fish. They had a kelp forest exhibit, as well as a special exhibit on seahorses.
Out in the back, there were some wild seals sun bathing on rocks in the bay:
Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of the very few in the world that has the knowledge and capacity to keep an ocean sunfish. Unfortunately their sunfish had been released (it grew too big) but here's a picture of an ocean sunfish for reference. THEY LOOK LIKE GIANT FISH HEADS. And they get to be as big as 14 feet, making them the biggest fish in the world except for sharks. (They are harmless, though, and such slow swimmers that all they can catch to eat is jellyfish.)
We didn't get to see a sunfish, but we bought a sunfish stuffed animal anyway.
The rest of our day was spent cruising down the scenic highway 1, which had many lovely beach vistas.
Finally, at the end of the day, we reached Los Angeles!!!We stayed in a local Comfort Inn for the night, and moved in the next day (Thursday the 2nd). After over 6300 miles of driving, we're happy to be home!
did you know that i wrote about an ocean sunfish (aka the mola mola) for my animal poem in junior year?
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