Wondrous Water Worlds
Written: Apr 29 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Learning can be fun!
Cons: None!
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| ingridshafer's Full Review: Audubon Institute Aquarium of the Americas |
I was in New Orleans for a national conference and discovered that the Aquarium of the Americas was within walking distance from the conference hotel (the Mariott). The morning of Good Friday I had a few hours to spare and decided to go.
From the moment I entered the glass tunnel that leads to a Carribean Reef habitat and gives visitors a sense of being under water, surrounded by aquatic life, I felt transported to other worlds. I realize that the exhibits are artificial, but that knowledge did not lessen my sense of awe and wonder at the miracle of life's dynamic ecological web with its origin in the primordial seas. I found myself especially captivated by the sea dragons, intricately sculpted creatures that seemed to have proceeded from some medieval ivory carver's hands and belong in a Gothic Cathedral.
And all around me, mouths! As I watched those countless mouths opening, taking in nourishment, eagerly or complacently, feeding . . . feeding . . . feeding . . . I was struck by the realization that unlike plants, animals can't produce their own food via photosynthesis and had to develop the kind of "equipment" capable of "gathering and hunting."
From sea anenomes, jelly fish, and lobsters to insects, fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals, the graceful dance of evolution up the DNA spiral staircase is choreographed by hunger! Even what we perceive as beauty is somehow related to the need to feed. In humans the hunger becomes spiritual and precipitates yet further evolutionary leaps.
I found myself immersed simultaneously in the waters of birth, the waters of baptism, and a scientifically constructed hologram of the mind of God -- the One Who Creates through Evolution . . . from plankton to Homines sapientes. Fish eyes were looking at us, their latter day descendants, walking in our terrarium, separated from them by glass walls, keeping them safe from us. Let us keep them safe and free!
I was so overcome by the beauty of the exhibit that I set up a little website of more than a hundred aquarium images I captured with my camcorder (http://ionet.net/~ihs/aquarium/) for others to visit.
Ingrid Shafer
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ingridshafer
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Member: Ingrid Shafer
Location: Chickasha, Oklahoma
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
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