Texas State Aquarium

Thought I'd catch up on a few of the activities we did before we left Rockport. One day we drove to Corpus Cristi to the Aquarium. It was very easy to get to since it's right on the North side of Corpus (which is where we were coming from).

It is a very small .... but very well put together..... attraction. I was able to get a wheelchair to get around and there was an elevator to go to the lower level. They schedule several different presentations throughout the day.

One of the presentations was Dolphin training. There were three gals that demonstrated how they train them and we watched from the outside the pool. We later went down behind the 'rocks' where there was a huge underground viewing window.

This is before the show started and we were just waiting.

Here are a just a couple of the many many pics I took as we watched the 2nd show down below thru the big window.

There were three male dolphins and this pic was taken after the show was over and they were just swimming around.

This is one of the dolphins playing with a ball. He would grab this ball and lay it down on the bottom of the tank .... then roll his body along the ball all the way down to his tail till the ball would pop out and float to the top. Before it would get to the top he would turn around and grasp it again and start all over with his rolling the ball. He did this over and over again. Sometimes he wouldn't be fast enough and the ball would make it to the surface. Then he would grab it as he flew out of the water and zoomed back to the bottom. Fascinating. We stayed down there and watched them 'play' until they put them into the other pool for the night.

This was one of our memory highlights.

There was one section that had 7 to 10 tanks of different jellyfish. I tried to get pics but I couldn't take a clear one. I tried over and over and not one of the pics would turn out. See how blurry. They were ALL like that. I finally gave up and figured it must be because they give off an electrical current that disrupts the water. ???

Anyway.... each tank had a different kind of jellyfish. Some glowed different colors and they were all different sizes. Awesome!

Another tank we saw had these....

Seahorses! I was surprised how big they are. See Don's head?

And one more tank..... This pic is only of the far right side of the tank. This was huge tank and it was where another demonstration was given. A diver went in the water and hand fed the fish as a lady outside told what she was feeding and the type of food that each fish ate.

In this pic you can see the Sea Turtle, a Stingray and the very elusive Mora eel. They only come out to eat in the late afternoon. Otherwise they stay hidden in the rocks and caves.