Vacation Part 6 - Ripley's Aquarium

I'll be honest and say this is a picture overloaded post.
We went to the Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg.
Even though it's geared more for younger kids we still enjoyed it.

Jelly fish were addicting to watch.

It was mesmerizing to see them change colors as they gently floated through the water.

Can't remember what this creature is but God gave him some fascinating plant like features.

I was really excited they had these!

By far my favorite marine animal of all is the cuttlefish.

I watched the little one on the right change colors.

It was so cool!

 God gave these guys the incredible ability to camouflage themselves to their surrounding area.

It's kind of blurry, but this is the one on the right in the above picture.

He changed as he moved next to the glass and settled on the bottom.

When he was done changing he looked like a sand pile both in color and texture.
He changed quickly too!
So amazing!

They had a bigger cuttlefish species too!

He didn't change while we were watching him.

They have a shark experience thing where you go through a clear tunnel to watch the animals.

There were lots of sharks, fish, turtles, swordfish, etc.

It was pretty cool.

There was a sign that said the scratches on the tunnel were from the sharks attacking it.

That was comforting...

I never realized that swordfish had such strange looking mouths.

Reminded me of Grimace from McDonald's.

Inside the large shark tank were scuba divers.

Their job was to gently prod/guide the sharks to swim under the glass bottom boat.

How would you like to be a shark herder?

No thanks.

Horseshoe crabs.
They link themselves in a chain for protection.

They feel like a cold wet rock.

Jelly fish petting.

They give you special instructions so you don't get stung.

They're kind of slimy-squishy and super soft feeling.

These penguins were a lot of fun to watch.

There were glass windows in the floor so you could watch them

swim under the floor to the outside pool.

They all had name tags, except for the chubbiest one.

This is the aren't-we-too-old-for-these-kinds-of-pictures picture.

Too bad boys, now get over there and smile!

Also another do-we-have-to picture.

You think it would have killed them to smile.

You can see people in the tunnel below the shark.

The sting rays were fun to watch too.
On a normal day you could pet them in this area.
They weren't too cooperative because of the black fenced off area at the top of the photo.
It was the "baby ray nursery". Apparently they're called pups.
Doesn't matter what you call them, the adults weren't fans of losing some of their swimming area.
We didn't get to pet one because not many would swim by the nursery.
I also wondered if it was because the biggest ones didn't have enough space to turn around.

One of the aforementioned pups.

So that was our visit to the aquarium while we were in Gatlinburg.