Journeys›Photograph

Family Day at the Aquarium of the Bay

·San Francisco, California·#bay area#family#aquarium#2009#museum
A school of small fish swims underwater with a larger dark fish and algae-covered rocks in the foreground.

Family day in San Francisco, and the whole plan was Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39, down where the Embarcadero meets Beach Street. It's not a huge place — more than 24,000 animals but nearly all of them local, pulled from the bay and the water just outside the Golden Gate, which turns out to be a better hook than exotic would have been.

Our daughter parked herself at the big tanks with both hands flat on the glass. A silver school of anchovies wheeled past over kelp and starfish, hundreds of them moving as one thing, and in another tank a fish came right up to her face and just hung there. At one point a diver in a full mask dropped into a tank trailing a red-and-yellow hose and worked along the rocks, which held her attention longer than any of the fish did.

Her mother lifted her up to see into the higher tanks, and the wide-eyed face she made at one of them lasted the rest of the visit. On the way out she found a bronze tortoise, life size, and hugged it around the shell until we peeled her off.

A child in a pink hoodie looks into an aquarium with a large silver fish and white feathery organisms.A child in a pink hoodie with hands pressed against an aquarium glass, watching fish and sea creatures.A woman embraces a child as they look at fish in a large aquarium with underwater scenery.A man smiling next to a child with wide eyes and open mouth, both looking towards the viewer.A man smiles beside a child with wide eyes and an open mouth, against a two-tone wall.A person in an Oceanic wetsuit scuba dives underwater, exhaling bubbles near colorful coral and fish.A person in scuba gear holds a tool connected to a yellow and red cable, surrounded by colorful fish and coral.A smiling child in pink touches a large bronze tortoise statue on a light-colored floor.

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