Exploris Aquarium

The sun was gleaming proudly as our bus pulled out of Elms Village and headed towards Botanic Avenue. For the past few days it had been wet, rainy, and overcast, and just the sight of the sun cheered me up. Today I would not have to worry about my jeans being soaked up to my knees!

Victoria had told us she thought the bus trip would last about two hours, and I was prepared to be bored. We had taken the very last seats, where there are five cushioned places all in a row; there were about six empty rows in front of us, and then a group of Chinese students.

“There aren’t many people,” I said. “You’d think they’d try to fill up the whole bus.”

On our other adventures, to Giant’s Causeway and to the Titanic Museum, the buses had all been full. This worried me, just a wee bit, because I wondered if we had made the wrong decision in laying down eight quid to go. Besides, the two hour trip worried me. I had homework to do.

We left South Belfast via a protestant section of the city, and soon we were brushing past an intensely green landscape. Hundred of hills rose up before us, covered with sheep, cows, green grass, and the odd house. The houses in the middle of nowhere are often the most beautiful. They are made of stone and look old, quintessentially Irish, before Westernisation and Britain came and imposed their dominance.

As the minutes passed, a marsh suddenly appeared on our left, and then a wood, full of strange trees that looked as if their branches were raised above their heads, as if trying to catch our attention. The forest grew right up to the road, where a little stone fence divided fairyland from our world, and the leaves remaining on the trees brushed against our bus. It seemed as if the green landscape wanted to pull us in and take us with them; bushes everywhere hemmed us in, and the sunlight that came our way was muted by the colour.

We also passed through two little villages. My favorite was Greyabbey, because of the beautiful scenery and houses. I could write a story about this place, I thought, I could live here—I feel as if I have lived here before, a long, long time ago.

It only took us about an hour and a half to arrive in Portaferry, where the Exploris Aquarium is. It was smaller than I had expected; I had been dreaming of large rooms full of nothing but glass windows separating us from water, tinted blue from the lights, where we could gaze at fish. A part of me had been hoping for a glass tunnel, where above our heads would float great white sharks, tiger sharks, and hammerheads; or perhaps even some more docile, but still large and sharp-toothed, relatives eyeing us from the depths. But the outside of the aquarium only looked like a large white house instead of the megalithic steel structure I had been expecting.

The first room we entered was only small fish, like crabs and lobster, and then cod, and other fish. There was an open exhibit with sting rays, starfish, and sea anemone. I took a few pictures. Mel pointed at a neon orange lobster, half of its body hidden by a rock, and said, “Delicious.”

“Mel,” I said, “Nobody is going to eat it!”

She frowned. “It’s good,” she said, and moved on to a larger window with cod.

“Mm, cod,” Hannah said, just as I appeared at her shoulder, “You taste really good.”

I hoped this wasn’t going to be a pattern. I didn’t want to look at the fish merely to appreciate how they tasted cooked. (Although I had eaten a very nice fish and chip dinner a few nights before, starring a nice large piece of cod, and therefore was in no position to judge. Looking at a real cod, with its little beard on its chin and a silver stripe, made me feel a bit nauseous, the way I do when I look at a feathery red-faced chicken and realise I love eating it.)

We moved on into other rooms, full of seahorses, which are oddly unshaped in real life, their tails refusing to curl. They blobbed around aimlessly, shapeless and pointless and certainly not elegant.

“A seahorse,” I said, torn between amazement and confusion.

“A horsesea,” a boy standing by me corrected. I blinked, the joke totally lost on me.

“It looks like it’s going to throw up,” Hannah said about one of the seahorses, and that about summed it up.

In the little room was also a flat Dory-esque fish, from Finding Nemo, except oddly colourless and disproportionate, called a Unicorn fish, and then a Lionfish, which was beautiful and zebra-striped, and apparently poisonous. About at this stage there was a giant crash of water from a watertank behind me that, to quote Hannah, sounded as if someone had just fallen in, and so I decided to seek refuge in the room with the sharks. 

 There was a little baby shark and a stingray in the center of the room, and the stingray was amazingly show-offy. It keep coming to the surface and bobbing, as if to say, I’m here, I’m here, adore me! It also started to dance, by flapping its (for lack of a better word) “fins”, which propelled it backward. Sometimes it would come up to the glass and press itself against it, showing us its soft white belly, and its gaping mouth, which it would flex for us, hoping we would be impressed. The shark also came up, but this was less impressive, because it’s mouth seemed tainted red, and I was worried that instead of the blood of an enemy it was slowly dying and needed medical attention. 

 About that point the fish supply ran out, and we got to see the seals. There was a little baby seal all by itself in a small pool, and its gray head watched us forlornly. After taking at least four pictures of it apiece, we moved on and saw four rehabilitative seals under a red light. They were all named after food, and were called Ginger, Wasabi, Marshmallow, and Cinnamon. They were all in for different reasons, and some plaques told us about their rehabilitating process, and how after they were healthier they would go out and join some other seals in a second pool, and from there go back to the ocean. After watching Wasabi raise its head and try to smile for us, and about dying from the immense levels of cute contained in his cell, we went outside and watched five healthy seals playing around in the water and swimming up to us, also basking in our attention.

“Can we take them home?” I asked, but nobody seemed to think this was as good of an idea as I did.

“Seals bite,” Victoria said.

That didn’t dissuade me at all.

The last room containing animals was an exhibit room, with starfish, anemones, sea urchins, sting rays, and two different types of sharks. At 1.30, a man working for the Aquarium came with a long silver hook, and whilst explaining a bit more about the types of animals and their habitats, he pulled some up for us to pet.

One of the larger stingrays was as much of an attention hog as his dancing cousin, and he kept bobbing up very amiably, in a circle, letting us poke his nose and stroke his back and soft underbelly. Victoria adored this. Every single time he came by she would plunge her hand into the water and place her entire hand on his back or stomach. Hannah had a more cautious approach. She would reach out a finger or two and stroke its nose or the flat part of his skin between his eyes. I reached in, and was surprised by how rough his top half was, and how extremely soft his underbelly was. The effect was unpleasant for me, and I let the stingray alone.

Stingrays, the man told us, are actually related to sharks, which explains their hard skin. Sharks have little teeth-like skins that are rough; not quite so rough as sandpaper, which is too fine, but a bit like a cat’s tongue, except more like leather.

The man then got one of the small sharks to move around, and I got to touch a shark for the first time in my life. I love sharks, and one day I hope to swim with them. I reached out and put my hand on its back, and found that it had a softer skin than the stingray, although there were still bumps in its skin.

The second breed of shark was larger, and it was unusual because it was simply resting like a log at the bottom of the pool. Most sharks need to move, or else they cannot breathe, but this type of shark could. I touched his skin, too.

After he let us hold the starfish, which I didn’t like because it had tentacles and suckers, which felt weird on my skin. The sea urchin also felt weird, because it was covered with little prickly needles, like a hedgehog, that moved around. The last creature to go around was a scallop, which is actually a shell. When the man picked it up out of the water it opened it’s “mouth” and it spat out water. This is supposed to propel it forward in the water, but it doesn’t work so well when in the air. I was surprised to realise that this is what I eat every time I go to Red Lobsters. I’d never realised scallops were simply the meat inside of a shell, and that a shell could—well—feel. 

 After that, we went upstairs, which had an exhibit on how fast animals swam, and also boasted a imitation of a Mastodon’s jaw. Mastodon’s were giant sharks alive when the dinosaurs where, and luckily for Hannah, who really hates sharks, they died off billions of years ago. Victoria and I got our pictures taken inside of its jaw. We’re both very tall, and we fit there with room to spare. A mastodon could have swallowed us whole.

 With the photo shoot over, we went and had lunch in the cafeteria. It was delicious, and cheap, which I appreciated. Victoria had soup, Wheaton bread, and a doughnut. Hannah had a sausage roll (which are these really amazing sausages wrapped in flaky pastry), apple pie, and tea. I had a hamburger and tea and a Frankenstein cupcake.

With the aquarium basically exhausted, we went to the museum and spent the rest of our time in the gift shop. I bought a little Macaroni penguin, which I named Porter, who is currently watching me type. 

 We safely left the aquarium a little after two, and sat outside waiting in the sunshine for the last stragglers. A large black dog, wet from a dip in the nearby pond, came up, and it let Victoria, Hannah, a male RA, and I pet it and coo. Mel, who had been wandering around, appeared, and we got back on the bus and I got to again watch the green hills of Ireland slip by, reaching out to touch the glass. A black dog was playing in the turf. People were walking and biking in the afternoon. The cows and sheep were still grazing. Hannah was trying to take a nap in the seat in front of me, trying to shield her eyes from the sun with a little curtain. Victoria was listening to the Hunger Games soundtrack and staring out of her window.

I closed my eyes, and imagined the feel of sharkskin, and imagined swimming through the ocean with it at my side. I saw the sandy bottom of the ocean floor, with stingrays hiding and waiting for its prey. I imagined dolphins and giant turtles and whales, but mostly I imagined the giant forms of large sharks, and reaching out to see what their skin felt like.

When I opened my eyes again, we were in South Belfast. Home, I thought. A few seats ahead of me, I caught Mel looking at me, and I smiled. I’m up, I’m up.

A few minutes later we were rolling into Elms Village. The air smelled sweet with something I couldn’t identify. The sun was bright, but there was a small chill in the air. The yellow leaves were dancing in the trees.

It felt like autumn—a Michigan autumn.