Photos from Marine World

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Nana and I ventured out to Marine World (Fukuoka's aquarium) a couple weeks ago. Here are some miscellaneous shots from the trip.

 They had a big tank of sand eels, which are apparently a thing around here.

Back on our old Scotland blog, The Educated Burgher, our post about Noss and Bressay made brief mention of sand eels--that's what most of those birds we saw ate. Here, we got to see them up close!

 This dude was big and ugly.

He reminds me a bit of the one fish from The Little Mermaid, when the crab sings the line about the fluke being the duke of soul.

They had some really clever displays at Marine World. This one let you look up from underneath at a bunch of bottom dwellers, like starfish and hermit crabs.

Nana and her people (the squids).

An octopus, almost certainly up to no good.

This diver is actually bowing to the audience. Under water. No joke.

Nana goofing of at the touch tank. 

And yes, that is a display on the blue-ringed octopus in the background.

The blue-ringed octopus is one of the deadliest venomous creatures out there. Thankfully, they're also extremely shy, so bites are rare--but they can be found in tide pools throughout the western part of the Pacific Ocean. I'm assuming the sign says something like, "If you see one of these, don't touch it, you idiot!"

On a much lighter note, there's a place to buy slimy little fish to feed the seals and sea lions, who also happen to be in this cool multi-level tank that lets you view the animals from above and below.

Last but not least: the otter enclosure, which we visited at least three times. (Not only do we love otters, but they were also right next to the bathrooms.)

Just a few months ago, Nana and I saw an otter in the wild in Shetland. We think that was a sea otter like the one below, but it sure looked a lot smaller!