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| A lovely blue bat star. |
The
Oregon Coast Aquarium is one of Jasper's most favorite places. When we go, he is pretty much glued to the touch pool. He asks a million questions and has to know about everything. This seems pretty normal to me- it's utterly mesmerizing! But every time, the volunteers always comment that it's refreshing to find a child so interested in the touch pool. The have it divided into two sections, so that the huge array of starfish do not eat most of the rest of the touch pool residents. They move pretty slowly, so when they try to creep over the barrier, the staff simply moves them. There are many remarkable residents, including sea anemones, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, abalones, chitons, sculpins, and more. There are also hundreds of tiny crabs. Most of the time, only a few can be glimpsed, but we got there at feeding time and witnessed a stampede! All the creatures can be found in tidepools on the Oregon coast.
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| Abalone. |
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| Visitors are allowed to feed kelp to the abalones. Naturally kids get a big kick out of that! |
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| A baby jellyfish, s seen through a magnifying lens. It was really tiny! |
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| Lion's mane jellies. Jasper loves these. |
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| Sea pens. These are colonies of many tiny animals. |
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| Puffin. |
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| Sea otter. |
We also stopped by the
Hatfield Marine Science Center. They have a pretty cool touchpool also, and always have a giant Pacific octopus right at the entrance that has a much harder time hiding in its enclosure than the one at the Oregon Coast Aquarium!
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| The octopus was sleeping. |
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| This thing actually holds two people! It was built solely for a treasure hunt. |
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