Mote Aquarium

Mom noticed signs for an aquarium on her morning runs in Florida so we did a little research and she ran back one day to get us hooked up with tickets and a tour!

The Aquarium is actually primarily a research lab. so it's even cooler!  We got to see Seahorses in all stages of life, jellyfish, giant lobsters, octopus (who happened to LOVE cole), all kinds of fish and frogs and crabs etc!

We started with our boat tour.  We met a friend from Evansville, IN named Jacob.  Sometimes it's kind of cool to have a Mom who talks to EVERYONE.

Cole was not at all scared.  He was super excited to see all there was to see.

There are about 160 wild dolphins living in and around the aquarium.  One very special dolphin travels solo, is a notorious ladies man and has a fin that got cut up in a boat propeller.  He is usually very antisocial, but for us he swam right up to the boat and hung around for a bit!  His name is Rip Torn and this is a great shot of his poor dorsal fin.

Here fishy fishy fishy!

We passed the bird breeding islands and got to stop on a remote island to talk about the trees and boring stuff there.

Of course you know where we wound up!  straight into the muddy water.  I got particularly soaked and Mom wouldn't let me sit on her lap in the boat.

Note Daddy is stuck holding my muddy butt :) 

Mom got a few good shots of the bird breeding islands.  They smelled disgusting.  Here's a Mother Pelican barfing up food for her baby.  GROSS!

Who knows what this is.  Mom is just proud to have taken such a nice picture!  What a fluke!

We may have gotten into a little trouble for being late back to the boat, but we got there!

The Marine Biologist Keeli threw a net in the water and pulled up all kinds of cool stuff.  One of the highlights of my trip was seeing this cowfish poop in the tank.

The crabs were really fiesty.

Okay back on land!  We had a ton of fun looking around!  Guess how many takes it took to get THIS shot!

The best thing about Mote Aquarium is that you can touch everything!

Okay, not everything.  This guy was off limits.

We decided to test out these turtle nets.

Ha!  If we were turtles, we'd be un-catchable!

We got to see the manatees and turtles eat.  They're messier than I am! *Note we did see a wild manatee on the coast just outside our hotel!  Everyone was having a great time watching him/her until a hillbilly ran into the water to try to touch it.  

Crush was there!

We got to see a dolphin training session to wrap up our visit.  What a fantastic day!  Thanks Mote Aquarium!