A Birthday at SEA

It's always birthdays galore for us come August.

Actually the celebrations start a little earlier at the end of July with my Dad's birthday, then extend past National Day for my brother and DD. 

This year, for DD's birthday, I decided to book us dinner at Ocean Restaurant in the the SEA Aquarium at RWS. My dear husband loves aquariums and I thought that being able to dine while watching the fish swimming by would be a treat for him. And yes, for Noey, Meips and I too.

Since we have annual passes to the SEA Aquarium, we were able to take a stroll through the aquarium before arriving at the restaurant. I had hoped to make an afternoon of it, but with the husband having to work and the kids' schedules, we were only able to arrive at RWS just before 6pm. That's when I discovered that one hour before closing time is actually an amazing time to visit the aquarium because THERE ARE NO CROWDS. Ok, maybe because this was also on a weekday.

Definitely the only time I've ever seen the entrance to the aquarium this empty.

But as a result, I was able for the first time to walk leisurely through the glass-roofed tunnel at the entrance and admire the fish, something I wasn't able to do the last few times I visited. And snap some pics without having to creatively cut out crowds or inevitably getting some people on your picture. It was great.

My two munchkins being forced to stop for a shot.

In the process, I got to see some exhibits that I've never seen before. There were some extremely cool clusters of shark eggs where you could actually see the baby sharks growing and wriggling inside, and we finally realised that there IS an octopus at the aquarium. The octopus is DD's favourite weird creature and I know he was thrilled to see it. Now I don't know if they are new or whether I just missed them previously because I couldn't get near the tank!

Schooling Bannerfish

Shark eggs, with the wriggling, developing baby shark actually visible. It was super weird and cool.

Little Black Seahorse

Cuttlefish. Another oddity from under the sea. 

A big-eyed fish that now shares the tank with the Nautilius. I didn't manage to get its name.

Octopus!

Fascinated with the jelly fish. I can watch them floating around of a long time.

And not forgetting, the dolphins. It was really amazing to come to the corner and see them right there! Naomi didn't want to move from the tank before, but once I told her "dolphins!" she came running. The dolphins have series of interconnected pools of which they swim in, and only one with a viewing panel in the aquarium. So we didn't see all of them but were really excited when a couple swam right up to the glass a couple of times.

Here they come! A pair of dolphins come up close.

Looks like he's laughing, doesn't it?

Hello there dolphin!

Ocean Restaurant is right beside the huge tank with the world's largest acrylic panel, and we naturally took the time to admire it. They play Carnival of the Animals -- Aquarium on repeat and Noey has come to associate the piece of music with this viewing panel. It is quite lovely staring at the fish swimming by to the music. Very therapeutic!

The HUGE viewing panel. Pretty amazing actually. The little rectangles you see on the other side of the tank open into actual rooms, can you imagine! They reportedly cost about $2000 a night tho!

Oo, looks like they are going to hit each other! One ray had a big school of fish swimming over and under it, around and around. Wonder why?

Chilling away happily at the Ocean Dome.

It was hard to drag everyone away to dinner. Well, everyone except Meips who was complaining she was hungry. But the great attraction about Ocean Restaurant is that one wall is a viewing panel into this great tank, and it was really very cool.

More of that in the next post coming up!