This week, the Real Safari Newsletter is not about a real safari at all. What a betrayal! It has nothing to do with our usual game drives, but I figured that many people who enjoy watching wild animals might also appreciate a different kind of excursion.
This time, instead of observing animals in the bush or in the desert, we’re going to find out about wildlife under the ocean.
I recently had the good fortune to spend some time in Cape Town, so I thought it might be fun to invite my wife and one of my daughters to the Two Oceans Aquarium.
The name derives from the two oceans – Atlantic and Indian – that some people insist meet at Cape Point, 70km south of the city centre. I have always held that the two meet at Cape Agulhas about 223km to the south east of Cape Town. No amount of Google searches can satisfactorily resolve this dispute.
The aquarium was originally opened in 1995 and as I had to fly to Cape Town often in the years around the turn of the millennium, I was able to visit it several times while it was still spanking new.
A massive tank with hundreds of colourful fish gently swimming through a swaying kelp forest was imprinted on my brain. I recall sitting on a bench in a darkened viewing room mesmerised by a giant marine tableau.
I had not been to the aquarium for more than a decade and was a little concerned that it might have become dilapidated and consequently a disappointment. Many tourist attractions in South Africa have been neglected during the COVID pandemic and I know that it is time consuming and expensive to maintain exotic fish in an environment conducive to their survival.
My sister insisted that we should book our entrance tickets online and we all agreed that it was a good idea but somehow, never got around to it. It was a mistake, the Two Oceans Aquarium web site is fantastic and worth perusing before you make the visit. It has many pages of great educational material that helps you understand and appreciate what you are looking at.
We had to wait in line, which was a little tedious especially when we were instructed to pose for photographs which we could purchase later on.
I needn’t have worried about the state of the facilities. The darkened viewing areas were neat and easy to navigate, but more importantly, the two largest aquariums and the many smaller tanks are clean and well maintained.
Photographic challenges in an aquarium
As a keen amateur photographer, I was pleased to note that the windows looked like they had recently been meticulously cleaned. Taking good pictures was nevertheless not so easy for the following reasons, (ok, excuses).
In some tanks the glass, or probably some kind of special acrylic, appears to have inconsistent densities or thicknesses. This means that light refracted through the window does not bend uniformly so photographs look slightly distorted.
It is also difficult to get a fish into sharp focus because the auto-focus on my camera hops between the window, the fish and the swirls in the water.
Added to the focus complications comes the lighting – dark in the viewing areas and bright in the tanks. So there you have my excuses why the photos accompanying this newsletter are not as sharp as they should be.
Photography issues out of the way, let’s talk about the actual exhibits.
The first aquarium after the entrance contains only one species – a clownfish, or as it is more popularly known – Nemo. This exhibit clearly plays off the popularity of the movie, Finding Nemo, and shows just how influential Hollywood is in terms of appreciating nature. As if we didn’t know already.
Strangely, the circular exhibit contains well over fifty clownfish but there is absolutely nothing else in the tank – no other species of fish, plant life, rocks or sand to create the appearance of a natural environment. The behaviour of the clownfish is also rather peculiar – they clump together on a glass platform in the tank and swim around in a single tightly packed shoal.
As you progress through the passages of the building, there are several smaller tanks each containing only a few fascinating species.
The sea horses don’t look real. They are so different from any other species in the sea or anywhere else. You half-expect to find out that they are CGI representations.
There are venomous stonefish that really look like the rocks they are motionlessly perched on and a type of mullet disguised as sand that spends most of its time lying on – you guessed it – sand at the bottom of the ocean.
Terrifying ragged-tooth sharks slowly cruise the tanks provoking visceral tremors of fear in anyone who has ever seen Jaws. They seem to deliberately enjoy scaring visitors as they glide across the windows displaying their fully-loaded gapes. I can’t help wondering how safe the other fish in the tank feel.
There are many other spectacular displays including stingrays, jellyfish and the penguins, but it feels like the educational aspect of the aquarium is a little disjointed. Volunteers at strategic displays in the aquarium bring marine biology to life. They encourage visitors to look into a microscope to observe fish eggs and some of the tiniest life forms of the oceanic ecosystem, or help children at touch pools to learn from feeling shells, plants and animals in their own hands.
The web site (aquarium.co.za) offers rich information about all the fish in the buildings, but it’s awkward to access the info while walking around. It has extensive educational sections giving the names and basic descriptions of all the fish in the aquarium while other sections encourage visitors to join staff members on outdoor excursions where you can learn a little about marine biology and help with conservation initiatives.
Overall, it is a wonderful experience even if a little expensive for the average South African family.
That ends the underwater edition of the Real Safari Newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already. Next week – more adventures from the Addo Elephant Park.
Time to visit that amazing facility again - thanks for the reminder.
Most informative - I feel as if I have really been to the innermost depths of the ocean and visited its occupants personally.