An Ocean-Themed Excursion

Last week, we went on a field trip to this place:

It's kind of like an oceanography/fisheries research institute, from what I could gather. They've been around a long time as far as the Far East is concerned, because fishing has always been a main industry here. They've cooperated with lots of US fisheries organizations, and with some in Alaska too. We toured their museum and then their old book collection, which was pretty cool.

 Outside, there was this great mural. I think perhaps Homer High should invest in something like this. It reminded me of the mariner man all grown up.

They had all kinds of stuffed animals in their museum - freaky fish, majestic albatrosses, a HUGE turtle, and sea mammals ranging in size. No whales though - just seals mostly.

Here's their map of important research areas. We're all pointing to where we're from! This map was pretty great because it had Homer labeled on it. It's rare to find a map with Homer on it in the US... let alone in Russia!

After our visit to the Research place, we decided to go to the aquarium. It was exciting, because I'd never been to any aquarium-esque thing other than the SeaLife Center. This one was a little bit depressing... they had some cool stuff, but you could tell that the animals weren't very well taken care of. My first clue to this was their very sad looking crocodile, who lived in a cage with no foliage just cement floor and a little pool. Poor guy. The little fish looked fine... But then we came to a room with a huge cylindrical tank with a rock mountain in the middle filled with sturgeon, which are one of the prize fish of this area. The sturgeon might have been happy once, but since then they'd grown to be up to seven feet long and looking at the tank I could tell that with the rock mountain there, they were now too big to turn around. They could all only swim one direction. I envisioned releasing them into the wild, only to have a cluster of giant fish that could only swim in circles. Even worse than the giant circle fish was a tank of fairly nondescript fish... I'm not really sure what they were. There were about 16 of them lolling about unhappily in their little tank... but the unhappiest fish in the whole aquarium was the one nondescript fish that was a dead plank of fish propped upright in the corner, where the current from the bubble-maker had pushed it. The dead fish had clearly been there for a while, and I wanted to tell someone that they should probably remove it... but alas it is difficult to locate the proper authorities and explain to them that their average-looking fish is dead and should probably be disposed of. So alas, that dead fish might still be sitting in the corner of its tank scaring small children. Who knows.

I did see some cool things there too though, like piranhas, which I imagined would be bigger with more threatening-looking teeth. They had turtles and an octopus (who also looked sad), and little tropical fish in the front entry area that looked very well cared for. Upstairs they had a collection of preserved animals: fish, birds, marine mammals... that was also interesting. The day was an odd mix of preservation and mild animal abuse and exploitation.