SPCS students@Stanford University (2016): Group 3 10 July

Group 3

Eunice Cho, Sabrina Lee, Eunice Lee, Stephanie Liang

Today we also had a field trip and it was a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This aquarium was quite different than others with creature such as otters and birds which are unusual to be seen in any other aquariums. One of my favorite parts in the whole journey of exploring the aquarium was the touch pool in the exhibition - TouchZone, it enabled us to touch and feel the creatures which we normally could not see. One of our favorite creatures here was the small hermit crabs which were extremely adorable. These tiny crabs were about the size of a one dollar coin and they are able to crawl across our hand. Other than hermit crabs, there were decorator crabs which cannot harm anyone and stay in the same position for a very long time, when we touch them, other than feeling their shiny shells. We could actually feel the algae which the decorator crabs put on their body as camouflage which felt quite fuzzy and itchy. There were also other types of sea creature such as Black Turban Snails, Purple Sea urchins, Algaes and even Abalones, they were all quite slimy and felt funny to us.

Other than touching the little creatures, we also learnt a lot of knowledge and saw different sea animals. The most impressive one must be the Garden eels which we did not expect to see in the aquarium. It was known that the garden eels that belong to the subfamily Heterocongrinae in the conger eel family. The majority of garden eels lived in the Indo-Pacific, but species could also be found in warmer parts of the Atlantic Ocean and East Pacific and it is in a shake like shape. There were also extremely huge tuna and hammerhead sharks which were enormous and very impressive, and to be honest, they were quite scary too.

We had not seen these kinds of creatures in Hong Kong which was really incredible and gave us a chance to experience something new. Another theme that had brought out in the aquarium was environmental protection, we saw an aquarium volunteer holding a tube of jelly-like substance and she asked us what they were, at first, we thought it was jellyfish, but she later explained to us that they were plastics and marine animals often mistaken these plastic bags for food and cause indigestion and eventually death. It told us the importance to protect the environment and to litter properly. The rubbish could truly affect a whole larger food chain which might cause the extinction of animals we saw in the aquarium today. We truly felt the duty and the responsibility to protect the environment after the chat with the aquarium volunteer. Today’s visit also taught us to protect the sea creatures by buying or eating less sea food. "Purchase seafood caught or farmed in ways that support a healthy ocean - now and for future generations", this phrase told us the importance of protecting sea creatures, and it would further affect our future generation. The aquarium was surely an amazing educational journey which could reinforce our duty of protecting the environment. We would like to go again in the future.

After visiting the aquarium, we went to the shopping street near the aquarium. First, we went to the yogurt shop called Pinkberry which is recommended by our teacher. We all loved to eat yogurt. We all ordered small sized but with different flavors. All were very delicious and we had a delightful time strolling down the street while having frozen yogurt. The shops were very interesting and we had a lot of fun, we also bought quite a bunch of items for our friends and family as souvenirs.