Visit to the Aquarium

It's Sunday in Okinawa, and today we drove up to the northern part of the island to visit Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. It took us about an hour or a little more to drive from Camp Foster to the aquarium.  Although it was not a very sunny day, it was nice and warm.  There are some strong winds on Okinawa, and we experienced some of those today.

Scuba diving and snorkeling are very popular here in Okinawa, and after we visited the aquarium, we can see why.  The aquarium displays some of the unique species of marine life that live in the seas surrounding the island. 

One of our favorite finds at the aquarium was this strange looking bearded cuttlefish.  To us, he looked like Davy Jones' character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies!  Sometimes his beard/tentacles would move and curl.

When we left our bearded fish friend, we were surprised to go around the corner and see a massive tank that is about four stories tall.  In the tank were three whale sharks, the largest fish in the world, along with a number of species of rays (manta rays and sting rays) and tuna and other fish.  It was hard for us to really tell how enormous the whale sharks were until we were right underneath them.  You can walk directly under them.  Take a look.  Notice how big they are compared to the people standing.  We counted, and those sharks are about as long as 20 people!

You can really tell how big a shark is by looking at this picture of Jill and me standing in the mouth of a shark.  Check out the size of those teeth!

We also saw some manatees.  Did you  know manatees eat iceberg lettuce?  Neither did we:-)  But we happened to be there during feeding time.  You can't tell in the picture very well, but he would grip the lettuce with his flippers and hold it while he was eating.

After the manatees were the sea turtles. There were actually three different species in the tank.  Apparently it's very hard to get turtles to reproduce successfully in captivity, but they have built a nesting beach where the turtles can go to lay eggs and make nests.  There were three different sets of turtle babies in separate pools today.

After we  took a look at the dolphins, we decided to treat ourselves to some Japanese ice cream.  Jill had mango, but I tried the purple sweet potato ice cream.  Yummy!  It doesn't sound that good, does it?  But our guide told us that in Okinawa, the purple sweet potato is eaten a lot.  After our snack break, we headed to our car and back to the southern end of the island.  Here are a couple of pictures of the outside of the aquarium so you can get an idea of how big it is.