In the Shark Tank

AHH SHARKS FINALLY YESSS SHARKS !
So I love sharks. Like a lot. Like they're awesome. So I was super hype to go shark diving at the aquarium here in Auckland.
Monday morning though, when I had to get up I was super tired and didn't want to get up. But then I just had to remind myself I was getting up to go dive with the SHARKS and I got myself up and took an Uber over to the aquarium.
They Uber guy went past the entrance to drop me off at the exit because I don't know why. So I had to walk all the way from the other side of the area to the entrance, but it was cool because the footpath was little penguin feet. It was adorbs.
I was a bit early, so I had to wait at for the guy to come get me. The waiting area was next to these fish things that were super shiny and they moved their fins like wings instead of fins, as if they were flying. They were hypnotic. I kept looking around trying to find a sign to see what they are, but I didn't see one. But I spent the whole time waiting just looking at them. They were cool, man.
So then our guide, Patrick, came to take us in the back to get ready for our dive. It was just me and a girl from Perth, Michelle. Michelle never dived before so Patrick gave us a run through of like general safety for diving, then he explained about the types of sharks we would encounter: Sand Shark, Broadnose Sevengill Shark, School Shark, and Wobbegong Shark, along with a Short Tail Stingray, and a Moray Eel. Oh my goodness I was excited.
Then we got all ready in our wetsuits, booties, and hoods and headed into a little area before the main tank where we were put into our BCD with the tanks and such already hooked up for us. Then we had to remove and reinsert our regulator while underwater and clear our masks before we could move into the shark tank. But then we headed down into the main tank and climbed over the human tunnel to get to the area we would be chilling in to observe the sharks. When I say chilling, I mean chilling. The water was FREEZING. I was seriously very cold.

last time i was an aquarium fish
Florida 2016

Other than being cold, it was the best dive I've ever been on lol. We were only 8 feet underwater, so it wasn't like it was an intense dive or anything, but it was nice. I've never been so content/at peace/at ease in my whole life. I could've stayed there forever. Also, I'm pretty sure I was an aquarium fish in my past life because I love being a fish in an aquarium.
So anyways there were lots of sharks and they kept swimming up close, even the Wobbegong which is like super old and likes to just chill on the floor. The stingray also kept swimming up to us and I really wanted to touch it but we weren't allowed.
But our safety diver, Adam, took lots of pictures and videos and we got copies of all of them so I have lots of good pictures and I made a video which you can find on my Facebook page.
So yeah we just like chilled, looking at the sharks and the people going through the tunnels. Oh and these two little pink fish came right up to me and I might've had a staring contest with them (I won both times). Like I honestly think they wanted to give me fishy kisses. It was actually super adorable.
So now I'm just gonna post some cool pictures for you but there will be more words after the pictures so keep reading!

Once we were almost frozen solid, it was time to get out. So we headed back out and got in super hot showers. Like the shower at my apartment isn't as warm. It actually felt super nice because I was so cold; usually hot water makes me super dizzy so I have to take medium to cold showers. 

Even though the dive was AMAZINGly awesome, something was wrong. My ear felt like I broke it again. We were only in 8 feet of water; if I seriously hurt my ear diving in 8 feet of water, there's something majorly wrong with me. Then I remembered what I learned about myself in yin yoga - I clench when I'm uncomfortable. Although mentally I had never been more comfortable, physically I was freezing. My knees (thankfully) couldn't clench because they were bent as a seat for the rest of my body. My hands were clasped together super tight to keep from shivering, which leaves my jaw. I was unintentionally and unaware-ly biting so hard on my regulator to try to keep from shaking in the cold that I had actually seriously hurt my jaw. I confuse my jaw with my ear more often than not, to be honest. So I hadn't hurt my ear in only 8 feet of water; I had just clenched my jaw so hard that it hurt really, really badly. At least my ear was fine. 

See, showers are great. They let you think through your problems to figure them out logically. It would not have been logical for me to have busted my ear in only 8 feet deep. But my poor jaw can clench rather hard, making it totally possible (and it certainly happened based upon this pain) to cause a pressure problem when it finally unclenched itself. 

Maybe that's also why I have a chewing gum problem...I always thought it was just to relieve the pressure in my head but it probably relieves some jaw pressures as well...interesting. 

Anyways, after my shower, Patrick gave us some sharks' teeth he found on the floor of the tank. He had already given us each one while we were in the tank, but he found more on the way out. Michelle got two sand shark teeth and I got three (yeah he must like me better) seven gill shark teeth (two from the top of the mouth and one from the bottom). Oh my goodness I was excited. I used to have a shark tooth necklace that I bought at some souvenir store somewhere and I loved it so much I slept in it and it cut up my chest and arm really bad. It's a good thing these teeth are just teeth and not on a necklace haha. I'm so excited to have teeth that came straight from the shark and not straight from the store (who got them from a shark but still...it's more sentimental this way haha). 

After he gave us our teeth, he showed us some of the fish in quarantine and explained how they got there/where they're going and took us to the sea turtle to explain about their sea turtle rescue program, which is kinda similar to the one at the Baltimore Aquarium (aqua.org baby). The sea turtle was really small but it's the smallest sea turtle species in the world so that's as big as it gets. 

Oh, speaking of the world, the sharks are from New York, so they're still on Northern Hemisphere cycling, so for them they're in mating season, so the girl had lots of bites on her because that's how they keep from drifting apart when they're doing their thing, and sharks have super strong skin as a result so they can put up with all the biting and they also heal super fast because of it. Oh and since they're from New York, they were flown to the Auckland aquarium and it's currently the longest airtime/flight time a shark has experienced. So these sharks are like pro flyers. No wonder we connect so well, us east coast USA creatures. 

Okay back to the turtle, it got sent to rehab because it was hit by a boat, like a lot of turtles are. It also ingested some plastic, like a lot of turtles do. So it was in bad shape. So yeah, don't litter. Watch your plastics. Be careful of turtles when boating. 

After we were done with our little behind the scenes tour, we got free hot drinks at the cafe while we were waiting for our picture/video package to be delivered with our certificate of survival. I wasn't expecting all that, so it was really nice. Of

(Sorry for the interruption but Heaven Knows just came on my Pandora and that's my dive song and yes I'm so pleased right now. How perf. Dude I love the pretty reckless, like forreal. & this song. lovely.)

Of course I got tea because tea and salmon are how I live. Oh, speaking of salmon, when I was packing my bag to come to the aquarium I was like "I should take some food in case I get hungry" and I was gonna grab my salmon because salmon is life, but then I was like "lol I'm going to an aquarium that is so wrong to be eating fish in front of the fish like I can't do that" so then what did I grab instead? TUNA! I grabbed a tuna and crackers pre-packaged packet thing like they sell at dollar tree, but bigger because they don't have dollar tree in New Zealand. But like LOL TUNA IS STILL A FISH. Literally the reason I didn't bring my salmon was because it was a fish but then I brought tuna which is also a fish. Like what. Sometimes I just don't think. But I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat it anyways, but still, it's the fact that it was still a fish in an aquarium and it was kinda ironicly funny. 

So anyways, since Michelle is from Perth I was talking to her about Coral Bay and the whale sharks and such to get a local's input. She actually hasn't been to Coral Bay because when they get holidays they usually go to like Bali or Europe or somewhere far away because they don't get many holidays, but her sister just did the whale shark snorkel and she loved it and thought it was amazing. Her sister lives in Auckland near the zoo. Her sister's boyfriend is actually turning 30 this weekend and that's why she's here. But then she said that Ningaloo Reef (the one with the whale sharks) is actually a lot better than the Great Barrier Reef according to a bunch of like professional scientists and divers because it's more protected, less touristy, and much more alive. She convinced me that I definitely need to go do my tour of western Australia instead of going back to Cairns because I feel like I would definitely have the best time with the whale sharks and such. Also Michelle was lowkey super scared of the sharks in the tank because they had sharp teeth and such, but she said that she's not even scared of the whale sharks because even though they're huge they're harmless. So even though I wasn't scared of these sharks at all and was super at peace with them, it was still nice to hear that even though they're literally huge the whale shark's aren't intimidating at all, even with their size. So yeah I definitely must do that before coming back to the states in a couple months. 

In a few minutes Adam came out with our pictures and videos on a flash drive for us and gave us our certificates of survival. It was nice. We kept sitting there, watching the interesting fish and talking though.
I finally found a sign about the fish we had been looking at for probably like an hour, including the time we were staring at them before the shark dive. They're just so interesting and I wasn't kidding when I said hypnotic. I could've sat there watching them forever. Eventually I peeled myself away to go to the penguins, but I'll get to that.

So these fish were actually, guess what... ELEPHANT SHARKS. ELEPHANT. SHARK. ELEPHANT SHARKS! Like WHAT. Those are my two favorite things like ever (except for my beloved Pal). Okay I kinda want one. I still want a real elephant, and it'd be super cool to have a more sharky shark, but I'll take all three. Charge it to my grandmother's card (wink), just kidding.
I can see they're called elephant sharks because of their trunky nose, but they look more like leopards than elephants, but I've already seen a leopard shark, so I know that that name was already taken. To be honest their noses kinda bother me, but their wings make up for it. Also in the tank with them was that long fish that I saw on my snorkel in Bali that was totally intriguing also. I still have no idea what it is....maybe I'll google it. 

So eventually I decided to go explore the rest of the aquarium so I could head back and take a nap. So I walked back to the penguins, which were almost back to the beginning. The penguins were cool. They had King Penguins and King Penguin babies and some other type of penguin that started with a G...Gentoo penguins.
I'm very proud of this penguin picture. He was framed perfectly, probably standing there on purpose.
I thought these were Emperor penguins, but now I think that's the kind with the like feather crown. (hold up, I'm gonna google it real quick). NOPE. I was right. These are indeed Emperor Penguins. See, I know my marine animals. Okay so now I just googled King Penguin and they look the same...are they the same? I mean Emperor and King are both names for rulers, so I guess it's possible. The King penguin pictures make them look shorter and fatter, but with the same coloring going on. I don't know if that's just the pictures tho. Let me do a new Google search. Okay so google says that King penguins are smaller but similarly colored compared to Emperor penguins. Hm. Interesting. 

Okay so I guess according to this they were King Penguins, because the chicks definitely looked like that brown puff instead of the Happy Feet penguins. But in my mind the adults still look more like the Emperor than the King. Ah, whatever. Well, you have the picture of the aquarium penguin above this Googled comparison picture, you can decide (but in reality they are King Penguins. They just don't really look like it to me). 

They also had this "feel the penguin water" thing where you put your hand in this thing full of water that's as cold as the water in the penguin habitat and it was a million times colder than the shark water. It was legitimate freezing. The challenge was to last 30 seconds and I probably lasted like 4 seconds. 

Then I moved on to see the rest of the small aquarium. There was a frozen giant squid which was pretty cool. They also covered the walls with a bunch of facts, like most aquariums do. In this section though, they were all about the Southern Ocean. Growing up, I had always been taught there are 7 continents and 4 oceans (Atlantic, Arctic, Pacific, and Indian). To learn there is a 5th ocean, the Southern Ocean, seriously shook me to my core and internally seriously upset me. Like why keep that from me? What is the point in not teaching us about this fifth ocean? Like why? I don't understand why we are taught about four oceans and pretend the fifth one doesn't exist. After everyone gets over the whole equal gender and equal race rights, bet I will start an equal ocean education movement. Like I'm seriously upset to learn that we just act like this fifth ocean doesn't exist when it clearly does. Like that's just not okay. & I can't blame common core because I didn't grow up with common core. I also can't blame Obama because I was way to old to learn about an extra ocean when he came into office. So who am I to blame? Can't blame Queen Anne's County education because what about that time I was at Olde Mill Christian Academy? Man. I guess I'll just have to blame myself for just believing that I wasn't being lied to about something so seemingly trivial my whole life. 

So I needed to sit to take in this new information. Good thing I made it back to those enchanting elephant sharks. So I sat and watched them for a bit more. 

Eventually when I recomposed myself, I moved on. I passed a tank with some bass in it. 

Then I was in the shark tunnel. It reminded me of the one at the aquarium in...Melbourne? Sydney? ah, somewhere down under back in 2012. It was kinda neat being on the other side when I was just inside the tank an hour ago. There was a "shark cage" group going in now, which meant that they wore snorkel equipment instead of dive equipment and just floated in a net about two feet into the tank and the sharks were on the other side of the net. Honestly, I was going to do both because I love sharks so much, but when I was booking it I realized that the one with the net would seem so lame after doing the dive (it's scheduled so the dive is always first). I was most definitely right. I'm glad I didn't waste my money doing that as well. (Also now that I think of it, it was definitely the Sydney aquarium that had the shark tunnel because I was wearing the same outfit I wore to the wax museum and that was in Sydney.)

So after the shark tunnel there were a couple small fish tanks with various fish, like one with a puffer fish and one with an octopus. 

Sea Dragons

Then there was a small seahorse section, with a few tanks of different types of sea horses, including the long nose sea horse and the yellow seahorse. They also had a tank of sea dragons. They're one of the only aquariums to have that, and New Zealand is the only place in the world where you can recreationally dive to see sea dragons. They're in the south part of the south island and they live very deep in the ocean but come up to the surface in the south island (I forget why....) which is how you can see them on your dives because otherwise they're too deep.
That was pretty much the whole aquarium. It was insanely small. If I was just going for the aquarium, I would be extremely disappointed but because I did the shark dive, I thought it was well worth the money, especially considering I got three shark teeth, hundreds of pictures, several videos, a hot drink, and aquarium entry all included. & they set up and took apart all the gear for me so I could just enjoy the dive. It was definitely worth every cent and probably a bit more, but it wouldn't've been if I had just paid aquarium entry and wanted to see the aquarium.
Next to the giftshop they had their Finding Nemo tank, with the angel fish, clown fish, and the dory fish.

In the giftshop I got some post cards and some stamps, but I'm two stamps and one post card short because I miscalculated in my head, but oh well. I'll get it all sorted eventually. 

Then I went out the exit, where I saw a shark car and had a great view of the Auckland skyline. 

 After wandering around for a bit in search of the free aquarium to city shuttle (it wasn't yet running in the morning for as early as I had to be there for the shark dive, which is why I Ubered there), I decided to go back to the entrance to look for/ask about the shuttle. But when I got to the entrance, the shuttle was right there and it was getting ready to leave - perfect timing! So I hoped on board and took a window seat.
So the bus looks like a shark because it's for the aquarium. I love it and think it's the most adorable bus ever. But whenever we were stopped, like at a red light or something, and there were people they kept making fun of it. Like there was this group of boys like totally drunk (at like 1pm on a Monday) and they were like making fun of the bus and the driver. I'm sure the driver is used to it because it's his job to drive the bus, but like I felt so bad for him. Like it's not his fault he's driving a shark; it's just a job. Gotta get paid somehow. Oh well hopefully it doesn't bother him.
The bus dropped us off at the ferry dock and as I walked back to my flat, I realized I hadn't been to town since before Easter (like the real Easter break, not Greek Easter lol), except the one time I went to Father Ted's with Celeste, but we just went straight to Father Ted's and back so it doesn't really even count. I also passed two places that smelled like the sold actual fried chicken, so I'm super excited to eventually drum up the motivation/energy to go check to see if they actually have fried chicken some day.
Once I made it back to my flat, I uploaded some pictures and put the flash drive and shark teeth in a bag with my piece of sea glass I found in Coromandel so that I won't lose them. I'm definitely bringing them back to the states with me!
Then I attempted to work on my reflection paper and eventually did it and handed it in and went to bed. It was a great day.

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha