While in Washington my sister and I decided to visit the Vancouver Aquarium as well.
About our trip:
Day 3: July 23, 2005
Vancouver Aquarium
This was my first time visiting the aquarium (and Canada actually).
When we arrived at about 9:45 we went straight to the dolphin pool. We quickly learned about Laverne and were excited that we got to see her on her first day there. We watched the two lags for a while. Spinnaker was being trained a little. I found it very interesting that their training sessions were almost exactly like their “shows.”
After the lags we went over to the seals/sea lions. I don’t know how many seals or sea lions they have but there were 3 harbor seals and 1 stellar sea lion. We were standing by the corner of the tank and he came up to the rock right in front of us and started barking (I think there was a trainer behind us that he was interested in). He was so awesomely huge! Gorgeous creature.
We then went over to the belugas. This was by far my favorite part. I love how you can get so close to the belugas above water. Imaq was so funny. He floated in front of us for like 10-20 minutes doing little circles, making noises and just watching every body. He was so interested in all the people. He is one big boy, 3,500 lbs. Is that large for a male beluga? He just looked really fat. I know belugas are naturally large, but he was just huge. Sharkey of the Beluga world. He is so my new favorite beluga. We went to the underwater area before we went back to the belugas for the show.
We watched the beluga show first. They had all 5 belugas doing it. Qila and Imaq were at the “stage,” Aurora was up at the glass to the left and Kavna was at the glass to the right. Allua was by herself on the left side in the middle of the tank. The show was very simple. They went around to each beluga and let them do a behavior, and they pretty much stuck with that pattern. They targeted, squeaked, spun in circles, waved (both with flukes and pecs), Allua and Aurora did what looked like a beluga bow. I have never seen a beluga do this. It’s very sloppy, and very cute. The beluga show lasted about 10 minutes. It was wonderful and very educational. Nothing like Sea World’s flashy entertainment shows.
The dolphin show was like the beluga show. It was only about 10 minutes long, simple and educational. Laverne was in the med pool the whole day because it was her first day. Spinnaker did it alone (which I’m sure he was used to). They didn’t have him do much. There was one trainer (which is all you need for one dolphin I guess). It was the same women doing both of the shows that I watched. She had Spin target her hand when it was 3 feet out of the water. She did this many times. She also had him chase after a ball and throw it back to her, porpoising really fast as if he were escaping from an orca, jump and touch a target about 10 feet above the water, he did a couple of bows and slide outs, squeaked, a few circles. That was pretty much it. I watched two shows and they were both the same.
After the show we went and watched Laverne for a while. When we first got to the park the water in the med pool was almost completely drained. But by the time we went to watch her again it was full. She was really interested in the people on the dock. She would go over and look at them. One of her trainers was giving her some rubdowns. She wouldn’t stay but she would swim by and give the trainer a swipe. We watched her for about 20 minutes and then we went and saw the rest of the park.
I thought it was a really fun day. They don’t have many animals, but it’s an interesting park, and very educational. I actually learned things that I didn’t know. Sea World just doesn’t do that for me.
