Thursday, March 15, 2007

Monterey weekend, part 2


On Saturday, the Knights had a special presentation at the Monterey Bay Aquarium with an aquarium expert. He showed us cool high-definition pictures and footage taken with their deep sea camera. There was one clip of a squid that saw its reflection in the camera lens and came over to investigate. Once the squid realized it couldn't eat the camera or mate with it, it swam away. The footage looked too real to be real. At first, we thought he was showing us computer graphics, because how could anybody get such amazing footage of deep see creatures, and from so many angles? He could really zoom in to show us the tentacles of tiny gooseberry jellyfish. The kids (and grownups) all asked a lot of questions, and one of the Knight directors kept calling Mary "Mary the Marine Biologist" because she knew so much about angler fish. Watching all those Animal Planet shows is a good thing, I guess. After the presentation, there was time to explore the aquarium, and we came back after lunch to see more. The jellyfish exhibit was beautiful, and the kids really liked standing under a crashing wave (inside a huge window, of course).

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