Elf Sternberg

The first day of our staycation, necessitated by my injured leg, involved hitting the Seattle Aquarium. If we're stuck anywhere without much walking, doing the touristy things with the kids is definitely the way to go.

Our visit started with a nasty surprise: a dead cocker spaniel floating in the water under the aquarium. (We later confirmed with one of the staff that that's what it was.) Once inside, though it was a much cleaner world. Inside the foyer is a huge plexiglassed-in aquarium and through it we watched a diver feed the fish and anemones while she talked to the kids about what she was doing.

Further inside there was the tidepool area, where the kids entertained themselves touching the starfish and other tidepool life the aquarium had determined was safe to touch, plus a large octopus and other miscellany. We walked among the "weird fish" exhibit and the tidal reef exhibits, and learned that one of the staff at the Seattle Aquarium is the "official studbook keeper for the seahorse," which doesn't sound like a very effective pick-up line, if you ask me.

We went to lunch at a fast-food joint further down the waterfront from the aquarium, then headed back for the afternoon shows. We sat in the underwater dome (which at its top is less than a foot underwater, but it's still a cool feat of engineering) and watched another feeding. I watched a starfish eat, that was pretty cool. Then we went to the mammals section, saw the otters and the seals and the sea lions. There was a demonstration with the seals about feeding them and habituating them to medical attention.

I had a chance to speak with three of the biologists on staff at different occasions. All of them said we ought to be very worried about the acidification of the oceans and the loss of phytoplankton on the surface. As in no-shit-the-70's-ecodisaster-folks-were-right worried.

But there was very little of that visible within the aquarium. It was all very much a happy place, with the only concerns being minimized throughout the exhibits. It was one of the things that annoyed me the most: there wasn't much of an attempt to educate the audience, just entertain. Look at the octopus, isn't he big? Look at the otter, isn't he cute? There were a few child-friendly "You can help save the watersheds!" scattered here and there, but right outside, under the pier, you could see a vast wasteland of plastic and waste wood that belied the cheerful reticence of the aquarium to be a bummer. The cynic in me says that the board, made up as it is of people from Boeing, Microsoft, and other corporate interests, don't want to alarm the people too much. Omaha says I'm too cynical: it's just that they believe the audience doesn't care.

They're probably right. And they won't care until soylent green is people.