The Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport was our destination for the day. Since neither Peggy nor I are old enough to get a senior discount, we passed $23 a head to the lady at the desk for admission. After visiting the place, we decided the price was definitely fair.
A good portion of the exhibits are outside in the weather but since it was absolutely sunny and gorgeous outside we thought that was okay. The first building we entered was a section called “The Passages” which are glass tubes passing through an enormous aquarium with sharks and rays in one tank, rockfish in another and shoreline critters in a third. The views of an aquarium are much better from the bottom than they are from above the surface of the water or through a glass partition from the side. It is a bit chilling when a big, toothy shark swims about 4 inches away from you. Watching how rays propel themselves through the water is pretty neat, too.
Emerging from the tubes we went outside and found an exhibit with Oregon aquatic birds and they had all the sort of uninteresting types but they also had crested puffins which are very spiffy looking guys with big orange beaks, long feather tufts that look like enormous eyebrows and short tails all mounted on their little almost-spherical bodies. Normally, only fishermen and oceanographer types get to see puffins because they only nest and mate on offshore islands, cleverly avoiding humans. Some of the other aquatic birds gave us demonstrations of how well they can swim underwater. These guys were like little torpedoes.
We continued on to the pinniped or seals and sea lion enclosure. They were hauled out on rocks within their enclosure enjoying the magnificent weather by sunning themselves while loafing on their backs. Very little movement was detected here because it was not feeding time. Right next door, however, they have a large orange octopus who was very active while showing us all sides of himself including completely spreading out across the entire viewing surface of the glass by gripping it with his sucker things on his 8 arms.
After quite a while of watching the octopus squish about, we wandered over to the sea otter enclosure to watch our favorite aquatic animals of all. As usual, the younger members of the collection were engaged in continuous roughhousing while the older members of the clan were drifting around on their backs periodically pushing themselves through the water using one lazy back foot. We hung out for a while here because feeding time was imminent and the otters became very active once the marine mammalogist (no kidding – she does not discuss breasts) entered the enclosure packing buckets of fish and clams. Otters eat about 25% of their weight in food daily which these otters proved by instantly gulping the small chunks and giving the big fish a few chomps before swallowing them. They let the clams sink initially, finding them and ripping them open to devour the contents after the fish is gone. These animals appear to live a very fun life.
I stopped by to check out some turkey vultures (certainly not aquatic birds) before moseying into some more exhibits they have covering shoreline and tide pool critters like crabs, shrimp, moray and wolf eels, starfish, urchins and anemones, sea cucumbers which are not food, reef fish that are extremely colorful along with all kinds of other bizarre critters.
The Newport aquarium is not very big but their exhibits are great. This place is worth a stop. Allow not less than 4 hours. From the aquarium we went to a local crab and fish stand for some grub. For those who may be interested, the name of the joint was South Beach Fish Market and I can state for a fact that the prices were high, the portions small and overall satisfaction was nil. Peggy ordered an albacore sandwich, expecting a slab of fish on Dave’s Killer bread. Instead, she received a tuna fish salad installed between two pieces of bread that had mysterious, unbreakable nuggets in them for $9. For about $13, I got ling cod and fries. The ling cod was tasty but the six microscopic pieces they gave me seemed almost invisible. The fries were okay. I give the place a D based on the crummy menu descriptions, exorbitant prices and puny portions.
After getting half a fish meal, we went back to the Barbarian Invader to prep for departure tomorrow. We will be leaving the Pacific coast when we go although we are scheduled to get another glimpse around Seattle in a couple weeks. Our proposed route will take us through Portland and then the Seattle area.
Pix are available by clicking here