Skip to main content

Swimming With Sharks!

One of the coolest things we were able to do on Maui took place at the Maui Ocean Center. It's a very neat aquarium with lots of fish and displays (and a REALLY great gift shop).

But the best thing about it was...........

Kerry and Ben got to scuba dive in the shark tank.


Here's Kerry right next to a sting ray.

Look at all the white tip sharks! Kerry and Ben got to swim into a little cave farther back in the tank. There were some sharks who stay in there and swim through the scuba diver's bubbles as they go up. It makes the sharks "drunk" and they tip over and fall to the bottom. One landed on Ben's head!

Ben with his brethren, the hammerheads.

Kerry with a giant puffer fish. They took raw squid in with them to feed to the fish. The puffer is well aware that all scuba divers come with snacks and she is greedy! They had been warned ahead of time that she would nibble at their fingers trying to get food. Ben got so aggravated with her, he would put his hand on her head and gently push her backwards, trying to make her leave him alone.

The girls and I were able to stand at the viewing windows and watch. You have to be scuba certified in order to go in the tank, and Katie was absolutely beside herself that she couldn't go in there as well.

This was easily some of the best money we spent while on vacation. It's pricey but well worth it. When scuba diving in the ocean, it's often murky and difficult to see well. You also never know if you're going to see any cool sea critters or not. In the aquarium, you are guaranteed to see sharks, rays, and a huge variety of fish. Makes me wish I could have gone in too!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o

A Week After Surgery

Katie went back to the surgeon yesterday to have her foot checked.  It was the first time we saw the stitches.  When we saw her after surgery, her foot was already wrapped up in three inches of gauze and it's been wrapped like that ever since. The doctor decided that the sutures were not quite ready to be removed. There are stitches in the side of her foot where they inserted one of the screws.  The surgeon told us that she has to be very, very, very careful not to put her foot on the ground.  Any pressure at all could cause the screws to shift or break and that would be very, very, very bad. They knew we were going out of town for the wedding this weekend.  In order to protect her foot as much as possible, she was put in a hard cast.  It will come back off on Monday so they can check the sutures again.  This cast has a very limited time to be signed! Katie may not get to have a lot of people sign her cast  but she currently still has the initials of the sur