Visiting the Georgia Aquarium
February 8, 2016
The chosen family activity for Monday was a visit to Atlanta and the Aquarium. This nice tropical fish collection is a good background for a family picture. Jeff, Elyse, Jordan, Ashleigh and Darla.
Jeff and his three young ladies who are so rapidly growing up!
 |  After a relaxing weekend around home, the girls were inclined to go to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. Rod is helping out with the acoustics lab on Monday morning as a volunteer, now being officially retired, so he got home a bit after noon. We reached the Aquarium a little before 2pm. It is an impressive multistory structure with lots of creative lighting. |
Upon entry we could see a large tank where a reef was set up with an abundance of colorful tropical fish, so we headed down the hallway toward it, passing tanks of squid and jellyfish.  |   |
When we reached the large collection of tropical fish and the reef that they had constructed, it certainly stirred feelings from our scuba diving trips back in the 90s.
This strange horned fish was definitely not one that I remember from the Keys or the Caribbean.
 They had created a wonderful habitat with anemones for the clownfish to hang out in. And I thought this banded butterfly fish was fabulous. |  |
 |  We headed through the tunnel underneath the big tank and encountered a bunch of old friends. A large school of grunt were accompanied by a blue tang and a couple of goatfish in the upper left. We had seen all of these in the Keys. |
The tunnel also gave us views of some of the bigger citizens of the Aquarium like the manta ray, a shark and a swordfish.
I don't know what Ashleigh was drawing, but there were certainly a lot of different shapes around to choose from.
As we moved around to the different viewpoints of the main tank, we got views of the dramatically large whale shark, one of the most famous residents of the Aquarium.
 | It was relaxing to watch the variety of fish cruise by. This spotted ray was particularly graceful. |
This kind of stingray was more like the ones we saw in the Keys.  |  |
 | I wondered what these striped fish found so attractive about this big fish -- they were following him everywhere! |
There were also some of the striped fish following this shark. |  |
 | Fish shapes certainly don't lack for variety. But what is in that hump? |
We enjoyed watching the penguins at feeding time. These two ladies seemed to take pleasure in their job of giving fish to the penguins.
There was a set of tunnels where they could get up close to the penguins. The penguins didn't seem to mind.
 | How about this for a really orange fish?  |
The graceful swimming of the dolphins made this display a relaxing pleasure. |  |
 | The display of lake fish had tremendous variety of color and pattern.  |
The African cichlid fish have varieties in the hundreds! |  |
 | A system of tunnels gives Jordan and Darla a unique view of this fishy world. |
I enjoyed these ordinary-looking turtles. Maybe it was from long association with them in my youth. |  |
 | From the ordinary to the strange with a white alligator. |
Piranha! A small fish with a large reputation. |  |
Marty was able to join us for dinner at Pasta Bella after our Aquarium adventure, so a pleasant family dinner finished off our day.
| Men's Retreat |
2016