The weather forecast for today was for widespread thunderstorms afternoon onwards. If that was the case, we thought that we may as well visit an attraction than be stuck indoors watching the storm.
Despite Harrison's late appearance, he was ready to leave by 12:30pm.
It took us 1 3/4 hours to get to the aquarium, and when we reached the car park we realised that hundreds of other families had had the same idea as us today!
All of the additional tours and boat trips were completely sold out so we had to settle for the general admission ticket. It did include a trolley ride to another site to learn all about Winter the dolphin but it was extremely humid and we didn't fancy sitting on the bus.
The first exhibit we came to was 'Stingray Bay'. Harrison really enjoyed taking photographs of the stingrays acting up for their audience and anticipating their impending feeding time. Bernard got chatting to one of the staff because he asked what was wrong with one of the rays. It had a broken tail which had since healed in an angular position.
The photo doesn't really show how bent the tail is.
The staff member told us that she used to work for NASA as a flight test engineer until her eyesight deteriorated. What were the chances of Bernard choosing this particular person to talk to?!
Next we went to look at the fish tank and small crustaceans:
After that we went upstairs to see Winter, Hope and Nicholas the dolphins. Winter lost her tail but has learned to swim again with an artificial one. Two films have been made about her - Dolphin Tale and Dolphin Tale 2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_Tale :
Nicholas was rescued on Christmas Eve, hence his name.
No penguins here for Harrison but there were a couple of lovely sea turtles for me 😀:
By now the lack of air conditioning in the building was making us wilt, so we decided it was time to head back to the car.
All of the larger animals at this non-profit aquarium are being nursed back to health. If you take a close look around the building, it looks a bit tired in places and not as high-tech as most attractions in Florida. However, they receive no financial support from the government and have to rely on visitors and donations from corporates to finance their work. The aquarium staff are doing a great job!
A storm was brewing and we'd completely forgotten about the rush hour traffic heading out of Tampa. One of these events alone would cause congestion. Put them both together and it took an eternity to find the open road. We were however, treated to spectacular lightening shows whilst sitting in the traffic jams!
You can barely see Downtown Tampa across the water (right hand side of photo) due to the heavy storm above it.
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