New England Aquarium, by Hayath

New Engalnd Aquarium - Boston

by Hayath of Bangalore, India.
www.indianaquariumhobbyist.com
Aquarticles

Suspended whale shark greets visitors

My work got me here to Boston for two months. In this frigid weather and below freezing temperatures, getting out of the apartment or the office takes quite an effort.

Was itching to really get outdoors and out of Boston for a change.

The moment my colleague mentioned the word "Aquarium", I was all set to go no matter what.

The very next weekend happened to be a long one and made time on Monday to head to the New England Aquarium, Boston. Past noon arrived at the aquarium with a serpentine queue for the tickets greeting me at the entrance, thanks to the Presidents day holiday for everyone.

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Magnificent "Seawee-sea horses" with one of nature's most complete camouflages.
It was a delight to see them effortlessly swim around almost in a trance.

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Humboldt penguins!

Stepping in, was delighted to see the penguin show going on. They have been trained to wave with their wings/flippers.

They had about 4 varieties of penguins in the pool surrounding the large main tank.

Built around the penguin section is a HUGE 4 storey high main tank housing almost everything marine from sharks to angels to little dottybacks.

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Side-long photo of an Asian Arowana (Green)

The first tank they had on display was one labelled "Historic fish" showing the Arowana, the Plecostumus, Long nose-Gar.

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Long-losed gar

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Plecostamus and Motoro stingray

Beside that they had biotope setups from Amazon and marshes. The lighting wasn’t that great, hence could not get any quality images.

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Archerfish

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South American turtle

If one wanted to see how big a "red tail catfish" gets, one had to see the one in the tank. It was close to 4 feet :-O One of the Uaru pairs were breeding in the heavily crowded, it was quite a sight to see the parents guarding the fry.

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Uaru parent tending fry

Was explaining the way the parents take care to a kid and one of the staff happened to ask how I knew all of this. This started a conversation and she showed me around a few tanks and took me to the hospital tanks section and inside the seal training section. Unfortunately photography wasn’t allowed in those sections as they were marked for staff only.

Then came one of the stockiest fish I'd ever seen in person, the grouper. The single pair was huge and pretty laid back, almost lazy.

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Grouper

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In one of the sub-sections, they had created a shore-line biotope with sea urchins.

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One small section of a rocky tank was kept for the small africans, could spot a few Julies.

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A tank had a pair of Electric eels with a electric meter indicating the intensity and what that meant (hunting, spying, etc.)

Moving on to the top floor, saw a few staff feeding the turtles and fish with participation from the public, which I think is a great idea to induce enthusiasm.

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Feeding time!

The large tank had a spiraling staircase with windows through which one could see the inhabitants.

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At the base of the tank were a few display tanks and must say they impressed me to the core. All of the corals in the marine display tanks were home-grown (cultivated @ the aquarium)

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