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February 05, 2006

Gingras Family Visit Part 2--Underwater World

Ok, so this entry has pictures from our visit to Underwater World. Since I don't have a good underwater camera, these are actually the best shots I've gotten of the submarine fauna on Guam.

To give you an idea of how these shots were taken: Underwater World is a relatively large indoor aquarium. There are three main sections and all of these were taken in the second. That is a large walk through tube under a 10 foot deep aquarium. The animal life is exactly what you find out on the reefs here, so it's very realistic. Considering the size of Guam, it's a very nice display.

Ok, enough with the background, here are the shots:

This is a view of the tunnel (the plastic is about 2 inches thick to keep the water at bay in the tank).


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A blacktip reef shark (looking back on my dive in Hawaii, this looks pretty much what the sharks there looked like too!).


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Here is a porcupine fish. If you look closely, you can see the "quills" lying flat. When threatened, it puffs up (like a puffer fish), but has sharp, unappetizing spikes that stick out.


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Our venerable friend, the green sea turtle.


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A blue starfish. There are many of these around the island. In fact, our bay has the highest concentration that I've found. They're a very unique shade of blue.


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A group of whitetip reef sharks showing off their unique ability (among sharks at least). They are one of the only species of shark that doesn't need to move to breathe. They can stay still at the bottom without moving and be just fine.


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Here's a dusky anemone fish with his host anemone. If you've seen "Finding Nemo" you are all too familiar with this little guy.


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Another dusky anemone fish in his home.


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This is a lionfish. Here he's swimming quickly through the water.


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This is him stopped in full display.


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I know it's a bit like cheating to use pictures from an aquarium to show you all the fish of Guam, but, hey, it's the best venue to get it all at once! :-)

Hope you enjoyed. Perhaps now you'd like to come out and see for yourself?? If you already live here, perhaps you'd like to join us on a dive?

Until the next entry...

--Jim

Posted by jim at February 5, 2006 12:04 PM

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