Ambiance: The Living Planet Aquarium

I have been having quite the eventful week!

Yesterday, the accounting and HR departments at work celebrated the end of auditing by treating themselves (and me!!) to a day at the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.

The aquarium is another of those things that I've always wanted to visit, but I could never make myself spend the money. It's not cheap. But the departments hosting the trip actually paid for us all to go, and treated us to lunch, AND I still got to count it as a work day! So I practically got paid to go to the aquarium! I was not complaining at all.

And I'd heard all these stories about the old aquarium, which used to be this dinky little grocery store-like building in the shopping district of Sandy, so my expectations were pretty low. This new aquarium was amazing. I'll give you a complete rundown.

First, we got to go through this special side entrance to one of the event halls where lunch was catered for us. One wall in the room was a floor-to-ceiling window into the same giant tank that has the shark tunnel going through it. It was cool to eat our lunch while watching sharks, sting rays, and sea turtles swim by. One of my coworkers commented that it was like watching a fire--it doesn't really do anything crazy, but it's strangely hypnotizing to watch. So true.

Our lunch was hamburgers, baked beans, potato salad, and lemonade--all high quality. When they said we were eating at the aquarium, I thought we'd just buy something cheap at the little cafe they have there, but catered hamburgers tasted amazing, as did everything else. And I'd been craving barbecue ever since Monday, when we could smell everyone's summer kickoff barbecues going on.

I digress.

After we'd had our fill, we all splintered off into little groups and explored the aquarium. I stuck with my friends Taylor (pictured above) and Jolene. We started at one end and explored every single place in the building.

The first section was "Journey to South America," which was pretty unique. You always hear that there are these millions of species in the Amazon rivers and jungles, but I'd never seen an aquarium dedicated to it. That section was very humid (reminding me a LOT of Paraguay), and was two stories tall, with huge trees in the middle and birds flying around.

This picture of the South America exhibit is from the Living Planet Aquarium website. It's not mine.

They had all kinds of critters in there that I can't remember or list them all. The ones that stuck in my mind were these black stingrays with white polka dots (there were a bunch of different stingrays--I didn't know there were so many in South America's rivers!), a huge electric eel, an anaconda easily twelve feet long, colorful poison dart frogs, toucans, a macaw, giant tortoises, a goliath bird-eating tarantula, piranha, caimans, and these HUGE river fish. Like, HUUUUUGE fish. If I lived along the Amazon, I'd be equal parts grateful for such a plentiful food supply, and terrified of swimming.

Since that part was two floors tall, we ended up on the upper level and went across to the "Antarctic Adventure." The penguins weren't very active today, but it was a cool little area designed to look like you're actually in some antarctic research station, looking out your window at the wildlife. The little gentoo penguins were very cute. (For a sneak peak, check out the website's Penguin Cam.)

This picture of the penguin exhibit is from the Living Planet Aquarium website. It's not mine.

That part was also two floors tall, so we headed down and saw that there was also an underwater observation room. Right when we got there, one of the penguins decided to dive in and play along the bottom right by the glass. It was very fun.

Exiting the penguin area, there were displays of jellyfish and a cool play area for kids with an arctic backdrop and fake orca to climb on.

Then came my favorite area, "Discover Utah."

(Oh yeah, and you know how I said before that my phone doesn't take pictures anymore? Yeah, I discovered AFTER I was done at the aquarium that the camera was working completely fine all of a sudden. I was so mad, but I managed to snap these two pictures of me before we all left.)

I thought it was very cool that the aquarium would have a section devoted to Utah. I mean, Utah is NOT what you think of when you picture an aquarium. The fact that we even have an aquarium in the desert is kind of hilarious. But this exhibit showed that we have tons of water critters, too.

It also dedicated space to actual desert animals, though, like the coral snake, toads, tortoises, and tarantulas (of course--thanks for reminding me that we have those here...). But there were lots of tanks of fresh water fish like trout and catfish, and amphibians like frogs and salamanders.

My absolute favorite part, though (in "Discover Utah" and the entire aquarium) was the otter exhibit. Oh. My. Gosh. I love otters. And I'd forgotten that we have them here in Utah...somewhere... They were SO CUTE. I know how gushy and girly that sounds but they were seriously the most adorable animals in the whole place. The penguins had nothing on them. They were so big and fluffy and agile in the water, and so active. I tried to go back and snap a photo of them when I discovered that my camera worked, but it came out blurry because they moved so fast. They were so playful.

This picture of the otter exhibit is from the Living Planet Aquarium website. It's not mine.

The caretakers had put fish inside this huge water jug and inside a ball with holes in it, so they were working really hard to get the fish out. The one with the jug kept its face against the hole and pushed it around underwater, trying to move the fish down the hole. The one with the ball was on its back spinning the ball in its paws, trying to get the fish's head through one of the holes. They were tenacious and obviously enjoying themselves, and I could have watched them at it all day.

Finally we went to the largest section of the aquarium, "Ocean Explorer." This had all the things you would expect to see at an aquarium--a HUGE pacific octopus, star fish, clown fish and anemones, these prehistoric-looking shellfish, lobster, shrimp, lion fish, puffer fish, sea urchins, more jellyfish, sea horses, eels, a shark tunnel, these funny whack-a-mole worms, and a sting ray petting pool.

This picture of the shark tank is from the Living Planet Aquarium website. It's not mine.

My coworkers were surprised that I was so brave around the animals. They're those rare people who know me well, yet don't know me well enough to know the biggest thing about me--that I know A LOT about animals. I was one of the few to reach in and pet the sting rays (something I've always loved to do since I was a kid at Sea World), and when we were in the shark tunnel, someone asked who would dare swim in that tank for $1,000. I said, "Yeah, I'd do it" without hesitating even a second. And when they asked why it didn't scare me, I explained how those sharks were too small to be aggressive around me, and besides, even big sharks don't like eating people, they just bite us on accident, thinking we're seals or sea turtles. So yeah, if I could do it for an easy $1,000, I totally would. And I'd have a blast doing it. :) They thought I was really brave, but honestly, knowledge is power. It's not bravery if you just aren't scared of sharks at all.

Anyways, it was a really cool aquarium. I was impressed. I've seen several aquariums, including the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and this one is my second favorite after Sea World. I REALLY wished that my nephew was with me because he would love it. It's a great place for kids, and we adults enjoyed it a lot, too. I definitely plan to go back someday.