It's not a particularly large aquarium but it has a lot of very interesting exhibits focusing on the marine flora and fauna of the northwest Pacific coast, including the large animals which are such a good draw for families with young children. We should have taken earplugs.
We were at the sea otter exhibit at feeding time but couldn't get in a position to take pictures. Even the aquarium didn't have a suitable one of Judge, their 16-year-old sea otter, so this guy is a stand-in borrowed from the internet. Judge's story is really funny. The Oregon Coast Aquarium got him from the Monterey, California, aquarium where he had been released back to the ocean eight times. He kept coming back to the aquarium so they finally gave up and let him stay. Guess he decided life was a whole lot easier at an aquarium than out in the wild on his own.
With no blubber to insulate them, sea otters have to maintain a very high metabolism to keep themselves warm, requiring about 25% of their body weight per day in food. Their adult size is up to 6 feet long and 100 pounds, so they eat up to 25 pounds per day. Judge is 65 pounds and eats about 15 pounds per day. His feeding bill is $17,000 per year. These are not inexpensive animals to keep on display.
There's a cool tunnel through a tank so fish swim above, below and around the people. It's the next best thing to scuba diving.
There were a number of leopard sharks in the tunnel tank. They're really beautiful and have the sweetest faces, unlike their huge cousins with the Jurassic-era glassy eyes. They're harmless to humans, feeding mainly on clams, crabs, spoon worms, bony fish and fish eggs.
Moon jellies doing their thing. Jellyfish are so lovely and graceful, especially in an aquarium where they can be seen much better than in the ocean. Moon jellies are harmless but many other species have stinging tentacles.
A sunflower or sun star which starts out with five arms but grows to 24 by maturity. It's the world's largest sea star, reaching a width of three feet across. Most sea stars are very slow movers but this species can zip along at the rate of 40 inches per minute.
When we went back after lunch we were on time for the afternoon feeding session in the seabird aviary. The aviary isn't too big so it's easy to see the birds, even without their being fed, but feeding is always interesting.
A pair of common murres with a fish the female has just brought to her mate. This is moulting season so she's having a really bad hair day. They waddle like penguins because their legs are set so far back on their bodies to aid them in diving for fish. However, unlike penguins, they can fly very well (up to 50 mph).
And, finally, my personal favorites, the puffins....
Tufted puffin on the left, horned puffin on the right. It looked like a serious discussion but there didn't seem to be any animosity involved.
A stand-off over housing arrangements? Who gets the burrow?
Both these puffin species are native to the Pacific Northwest. The horned puffin looks very much like an Atlantic puffin, but it grows fleshy black horns over its eyes for breeding season.
Tufted puffin taking an after-dinner bath. He was so close to us and was splashing with such vigor he got a lot of people wet. Their feathers are waterproof but are groomed and preened numerous times a day to renew their coating of waterproof oil and to replenish the air they push under their feathers in a layer which helps keep them warm and dry. It was something to see the water just beading up and rolling off him after doing all this splashing and rolling underwater.
Tomorrow we'll go up the coast to visit two more state parks and the Devil's Punch Bowl. We're hoping the wind will be calmer, but we'll take heavier coats this time in case it isn't.
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