When I was in Singapore for the summer, I finally got to go to the new SEA Aquarium! I had been waiting for ages to make a trip there, and when one of my teachers (my favourite primary school teacher whom I've always been in touch with) suggested making a trip there, I just HAD to say yes! This trip was actually made specially, as my favourite teacher's godson (and his parents) came to Singapore for a brief visit, and so I had the honour of meeting them. And of course, I made friends with my favourite teacher's godson, and we're still in contact today! He's a really nice dude, and into photography too! Plus piano!
Anyway - the SEA Aquarium is situated in Resorts World Sentosa - an extremely popular tourist spot - particularly because Universal Studios is there...and also because of the famous Malaysian Food Street! Here we are - the iconic Universal Studios globe and some desserts we had from the Malaysian Food Street. I did a post on the Malaysian Food Street about one and a half years back.
Time to head to the SEA Aquarium! Along the way, we passed by some exhibits - most of these artefacts are Southeast Asian, and appear to depict maritime trade in Singapore history.
The SEA Aquarium was GIGANTIC. I swear - it is absolutely impressive. When we stepped into the compound, we immediately spotted one of the major exhibits - the Shipwreck Aquarium. As its name suggests, the Shipwreck Aquarium has been designed to look like a sunken ship on the seabed. It's actually really cool - and schools of fishes swim around the replica of the broken ship hull. Spotted some stingrays too...and I gotta admit, I have a soft spot for stingrays coz I think they're adorable! Especially when they "smile" when they show their white undersides!
Not too far away - I spotted some leafy seadragons - a variation of the seahorse. These beautiful creatures look so delicate...yet so graceful. They're pretty sedentary, and were floating around happily in the tank.
Oh hi there cutie! Spotted a small starfish clinging onto the glass in a separate tank.
Garden eels - these small creatures bury themselves in sand and drift along with the water current. Pretty cool! They come in different colours too!
One of the tanks was designed to accommodate mangroves, plus other fishes that live amongst the mangrove roots. And we could see it all...now I know how life is like underneath mangroves...
Of course, the SEA Aquarium had an impressive display of corals. Here we go - colourful corals! My favourite coral is the brain coral...for a good reason - I study psychology and work a lot with brain-related stuff! One of my favourite taglines - "Brainz are sexyyyy!" One of the guest lecturers from last year came up with this tagline when she was elaborating on brain tissue loss in different forms of dementia (up till now I still haven't got a clue why!), and this stuck with me ever since.
These crabs were MASSIVE. But they had no difficulties in moving around at all!
"I shall call you Squishy, and you will be my Squishy!"
Moon jellyfish were displayed in another separate tank, and there were SO MANY OF THEM! These jellyfish are pretty transparent, and so they appeared to change colours as the light changed colour. I managed to get them in four separate colours. I believe their original colour is a very pale blue. One of the characteristics of moon jellies - their distinct gonads. These form a four-leaf clover shape right in the centre of their bells - and these are pretty obvious in these pictures below.
My heart melted when I saw these white spotted jellyfish. They're so adorable!!! These cuties were pretty small but "chubby", and were concentrated mainly at the bottom of their tanks...
Stark contrast to the cute spotted jellyfish - a lone jellyfish with beautiful long tentacles...in yet another tank.
More displays along the way - mainly featuring different corals, fishes and all. Of course, other marine creatures like starfish were included...and these displays were so well maintained! I really love the layout of these displays...and of course, I spent quite some time trying to take as many pictures as I could!
I swear - these sea anemone were one of the biggest I've seen so far. They're actually pretty impressive! And of course, cute little clownfish were swimming around them happily. Well - most of the time, we see clownfish living amongst sea anemone...I rarely see clownfish in aquariums living outside sea anemone.
I was really lucky - these fishes "volunteered" to be my models for the day! They were just swimming happily around, and when I approached their tanks, they kinda paused for a bit, just enough time for me to take a pic of them! So cute!
A riot of colours! Sea sponges alongside smaller corals...
Check out the vast variety of corals in this tank! And of course - check out the different kinds of fishes swimming around them! This tank was one of the most impressive ones I saw in the SEA Aquarium; it was so colourful and so vibrant!
Our last stop - the eel exhibit. By then, I was actually quite hungry, so when I heard the word 'eel', I immediately associated it with unagi (well this literally means eel, but eel cooked in soy sauce in Japanese dishes of course) - one of my favourite foods of all time.
Well - the eel I spotted in this exhibit looked too intimidating to become unagi. If I'm not wrong, these are moray eels. Moray eels are often believed to be scary and intimidating (because of their strong grip when they bite), but in actual fact, they're quite shy. They love to hide in crevices (which explains why they're all coiled up in these makeshift hideouts).
There was this small crawl space for kids to view the moray eels from a different perspective, so I decided to check it out. The space was good enough for me too look around, and experience the world from the eels' point of view...kind of...
As we headed towards the exit, we walked through a tunnel that had lots of sharks swimming above our heads. This was an amazing experience too!
Ended the trip by getting myself a cute soft-toy crab - the crab happened to be orange (my favourite colour!). And when I walked out, I spotted this colourful merlion smiling at us - so I had to take a pic of it!
And that's it for the SEA Aquarium adventure! Now time for me to move back to posting Perth pics. Sculptures by the Sea pics coming up soon!