The Vancouver Aquarium

We are going down our list of things to do in Vancouver. Within Stanley Park is the Aquarium. While the majority of visitors are children (very excited, noisy children), the main attractions at the aquarium are presentations made by the young marine biologists on beluga whales, sea otters, birds of prey and Pacific dolphins.

There were viewing boxes of a lot of endangered frogs. These are bullfrogs.

There's a huge saltwater tank full of creatures that are very close off shore of Vancouver.

Beluga whales are snow white. These are the ones the Inuits live off of. All of this is explained by the young biologists in their presentation. They stress that their habitat is shrinking because of the growth of global warming. They tell the kids about unplugging your cell phone chargers, etc.

They put on a little show.

This is a sea otter lolling on his back. They are quite comical.

There was another show entitled "Birds of Prey." This is the bald eagle. The biologist explained to the audience that this species almost went extinct because of DDT. He lectured the kids once again on maintaining a safe environment to keep these beautiful birds alive. They flew all around and were very impressive.

This is a Harris hawk.

This is a turkey buzzard. She explained that this bird eats carrion. It was an excellent presentation.

These are the seals. 90% of them have disappeared in Canada and this aquarium is studying this pair to understand why Canada is losing its seals.

The grand finale was the dolphins. These 3 dolphins were rescued from fishing nets. It was determined that they could not be released back into the wild. They live here and perform great leaps and flourishes.

Get a load of these flying dolphins! Okay, it was for kids. But it was well done and they are trying to educate.

As we were driving from the aquarium we drove past the totem poles in Stanley Park. This park is Vancouver's Central Park. It's not in the center, it's on a point, surrounded by the bay. A magnificent setting.

As I understand it, the totem poles represent a family's history; the clan they belong to, etc. So they could belong to the wolf clan and then other things on the pole could represent significant things that occurred in their family history and they can be placed in front of their house or at a grave site.