Waikiki Aquarium

Using most of the day catching up on my blog entries, I spend a good part of the morning and early afternoon writing. By 2pm I finish and wonder what fun thing I could stuff into the remainder of my day. For some reason the thought of the Waikiki Aquarium comes to mind. I do a little research and yes, I have time to check it out, the don't close their doors till 5pm.

So I set off to the aquarium on foot. I just love aquariums, about 5 years ago I went to the aquarium in Monterey, CA, probably one of the worlds best. I can describe it in one word, awesome! Waikiki Aquarium is just a little local aquarium, I don't have my sights set too high, but, being in Hawaii, it must have a great selection of local underwater flora and fauna. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I arrive, pay my $9.00 admission fee, and am handed an audio device that facilitates self-service touring by the entry of numbers into the keypad. Each exhibit has a posted number, you just punch in the number and the device spits out all sorts of useful information about the exhibit.

Rather than laboriously go through each exhibit (because I'm too lazy to write that much detail and I don't want to bore you to tears), I'll just spit out some of what I learned from my tour of the facility. Intermixed with that I'll just post semi-random pictures. The pictures kinda suck, at least any picture when the subject was in a tank. Sorry about that, but, you'll get the general flavor.

One of the premier marine science institutions in the State of Hawaii, Waikiki Aquarium was founded in 1904 and is the third oldest aquarium in the United States. More than 350,000 folks visit a year, all having the opportunity to see more than 3,000 organisms and over 450 species of marine plants and animals. Wow, that's an impressive number for such a small facility.

Apparently maintaining coral is a really hard feat to pull off, maintaining marine fish is far easier. By the looks of it, as I walk around the exhibits, I think the aquarium has nailed it pretty good. The exhibits look wonderful.

Coral is primarily a mass of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is a byproduct of coral polyps which comprise the "live" part of the organism. Coral grows at different rates, some species grow only a 1 centimeter a year, others can grow up to 6 inches a year. The surface of the coral is where the polyps are found. A rather thin, delicate layer, it is easily damaged if you touch and/or step on it.

To enforce this lesson, there's a video in the aquarium's mini-theater that instructs the viewer what not to do when interacting with the marine environment. The fish talk in the video so it's sorta geared toward children. It's cute. Basically don't touch the coral, don't feed the fish, and don't move toward marine animals and try to touch them, you'll just scare them (and they might bite you). Let them come to you if they want to (and bite you?). Oh, and don't to eat yellow coral, I almost forgot that one.


The aquarium does a good job is showing the different marine environments, from tidal pools all the way down to where coral can barely eek out a living, that's about 100 feet down. All the tanks are well maintained and frequently contain both colorful coral and fish. The "main" tank is rather impressive, they have two kinds of sharks and a few carnivorous vertebrates on display, like the massive groper. There's a little kid nearby, screaming his head off for no apparent reason. Hmmm... I think a rather effective strategy in parental control can be facilitated by this particular exhibit. "Hey Johnny, if you're ever a bad little boy, Mommy and Daddy are going to drag you back to Waikiki Aquarium and throw you into the shark tank!".

Ha ha. Just kidding, sorta....

Moving on. After audio-touring for a while I begin to get information overload. Pretty soon I'm no longer paying attention, all I'm doing is looking at all the pretty, sparkly fish, I don't care what they're called, I don't care what niche they fill in the broad and wonderful marine environment, I just see pretty, sparkly fish. Know what I mean???

Fortunately, the audio tour has ended, good timing, it's now time to check on the outside exhibits. Unfortunately, I'm assaulted by both bright sunshine and his big brother, heat, when I spill from the exhibit out into the outside world. I eventually adjust, then set my attentions on a simulated tidal area. There's even has an urchin petting farm, of all things.

One of the programs here at the aquarium is aimed at saving the endangered monk seal. As luck would have it, there's a monk seal sunning itself and appears to be asleep. I look really hard and close to see if it's breathing, I see no movement. So, is the seal really just a plastic model? There really are no more monk seals left?


Now for my favorite part of the aquarium, the part where they grow giant clams. Giant claims are very colorful critters, their mantle color ranges from green, blue, yellow, purple to brown. There are 8 species of giant claim, but only 1 species reaches monster size. 4 feet in length and 500 lbs, now that's a lot of clam chowder!!!


Okay, well that pretty much wraps up my tour of Waikiki Aquarium. It's a pretty compact place but it's stuffed full of all sorts of interesting goodies! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I head back to Waikiki Beach, make a few phone calls, grab some take-out, then sit on the beach to catch the sunset.