Advice from an Abalone

The other day I was visiting an aquarium where they had an abalone tank.  I had never seen a live abalone before and someone who loves slugs and snails of all kinds I was not impressed by the abalone.  It had a rather ugly shell and it seemed to be lacking the little eye stalks most snail like creatures have.

not my pic this is from google images

To me the abalone looked like a big black blob filling a shell. 

Last night I had a dream about swimming in the ocean and I found an empty abalone shell.  It was beautiful and pink inside.  It's the inside of an abalone shell is the beautiful part and each one is unique.  

not my pic

Although the outside of an abalone is unimpressive and rather ugly the inside is beautiful. 

I think this is like us sometimes.  Many people do not like the way they look on the outside, but on the inside they may be beautiful or in some cases someone may have gone to great lengths to be beautiful on the outside, but they have never worked on their inside.  The abalone shows us that true beauty is on the inside, but that beauty is only revealed when the abalone has died. 

All of us will die someday and when we do our inside will be revealed before God.  How much did we love?  Did we try to be kind, patient, generous?  These are the kinds of things that help our insides become beautiful.  Our inside beauty can far outweigh our outside beauty which fades away with time.

We can beautiful inside and outside, unlike an abalone, but it is the inside that matters more, because what we do on the inside lasts forever.  So remember to learn from the abalone and spend at least as much time working on your inside as you do your outside if not more. 

Adventure Quest #2 - Aquarium of the Pacific

Adventure Quest #2

Aquarium of the Pacific - Long Beach CA - 5 Stars

Last weekend I visited the Aquarium of the Pacific if you count Sea World this is the 2nd aquarium I've visited in California thus far. I arrived rather late in the afternoon and had about 2 hours to look around before they closed.  There were so many exhibits I was not able to see them all before they closed for the night. 

I consider this a top notch aquarium primarily because they had many tanks with living coral.  Out of the other 3 aquariums I've visited in recent memory only one of those, the one at the Henry Doorly zoo in Nebraska, had living coral.  The Aquarium of the Pacific had much more coral than any of the others I've seen thus far.  Live coral is a huge plus for me because sometimes you get to see cool interactions between the fish and coral.

It also makes the tanks look a lot cooler and more natural than having that fake plastic coral all over. 

 

This aquarium also had some very unique sea creatures I've never seen in real life before.  This was super exiting because I've visited aquariums and zoos all over the country my entire life, and sometimes it can be difficult to find an aquarium that has something I've never seen before.

They also had some outdoor tanks with sea lions, penguins, and sting rays and sharks.  I didn't get a chance to visit their shark tank, but the others were underwhelming compared to Sea World.  So if you're looking for fun touch tanks/larger sea creature tanks stick with Sea world for that.  Since that was not what I cared about this didn't bother me in the least and I just breezed by this section. 

The primary attraction was currently their jelly fish collection.  I was highly impressed by the variety of jelly fish they had.  Previously I have only seen jellies at the Henry Doorly zoo in the Omaha Nebraska zoo.  They have some very nice jelly tanks there but they only have two or three varieties and tanks.  The Aquarium of the Pacific on the other hand had many different types of jellies and they had them in different three stages of their life cycle.  I found the polyp and ephyra stages to be super cool.  The ephyra stage in particular was super neat because if you look at the tank from the distance it appears to be water with just a bunch of particles floating around, but when you take a look very closely you can see thousands of the tiniest jellies swimming around.  They were adorable because they seemed swimming around frantically and full of energy unlike the adults that always seem so calm and peaceful just drifting along. 

To my delight they even had these little bioluminescent guys (Cydippida) that I've only ever seen in nature videos.  Seeing them in real life was brilliant.  They produce a very wide range of colors and their light patterns seemed almost endless in variety.  They were a true delight to see. 

Overall I highly recommend visiting this aquarium.  

I give this adventure 5 out 5 stars.