Days 60 & 61 Aquarium

Let's see Thursday brought a day of work at Cafe 99. I had soccer training afterward followed by an early tea (dinner) because of the GAM (General Annual Meeting). Each year Whitley holds a meeting to review Exec. stuff with the students and then there are elections. It is mandatory to attend for anyone living in Whitley - but even though I attend I can't vote because I haven't been here more than a semester. All of the candidates made up videos or speeches and it was actually quite entertaining. The meeting was followed with a visit to the Pub which I attended but only briefly since we had another early soccer game in the AM.

Friday's game didn't start till 8 but it was reallllly windy. It was a close match and in the end we only lost 0-1 but unfortunately that means the end of the girls season - boo. Oh well it was fun, I think I played better on Wednesday though I just couldn't get on target this time around - grr. After second breakfast with the team I retreated to my room for some attempted homework time and cleaning. After lunch I hopped on the bike and headed to the Melbourne Aquarium! I couldn't convince anyone to come with me but it was still pretty entertaining by myself. It wasn't a bad aquarium, but sorta small and many of the fish weren't labeled which was bummer. I learned a bunch of random facts about fish. It also turned out that the aquarium only really covers Southern Australian fish, so my plan to be well educated while snorkeling in W.A. failed. In the evening after dinner I went to a dance recital with some of my friends to support our fellow Whitlian performing. The pieces were all student choreographed and even though I didn't understand most of them - it was still fun watch, unfortunately I didn't get any good pics - the lighting was rough.

The aquarium

Some species of unlabeled seahorse

The Murray Cod - Largest freshwater fish in Australia

Some species of unlabeled Angler Fish - he didn't have his little glow light thing on though :(

Gino's distant cousin!!! A side neck turtle species - instead of drawing their head back like our turtles they just bend it over to the side to protect themselves

A lungfish!

One of the displays...

Axolotl - which I'm not sure are even native to Australia???

Blue Blubber Jellies - straight from out in the Philip Bay - and apparently according to the sign, they are considered a delicacy for eating!!!

Southern Lion's Mane Sea Jelly - this is part of the family that has the toxins in their stingers - apparently the biggest one (an artic variety) can have a bell of 2.2 meters and tentacles reaching up to 36 meters (over 90 ft) - um holy crap.

This was probably the coolest part of the visit - a big room called the fishbowl where you could stand in this tunnel and all of the fish would swim around you!