Atlanta, Georgia

Later in the week, we had the good fortune to have a social event related to my conference at the Georgia Aquarium - which is huge! Like a lot of large aquariums, they have an area where you can go through a tunnel - and watch the fish swimming over your head - which is neat - but when you go around the corner - you see this:

Like all the pictures here, these click much bigger - but even at full size, there's no way I can convey how impressive this was - wow! I'm afraid most, if not all, of the pictures from the Aquarium are a bit blurry - it's not easy to catch moving objects in subdued lighting. The large fish in the first picture is a whale shark, and the one that looks like a UFO in the second picture is a manta ray, I think - I know it's a ray of some sort, and know they have manta rays.

They have some unusual sea creatures there - the first picture below shows garden eels; the fish sharing their tank are pygmy sweepers. And I learned that the lion fish I enjoy watching on my screen saver are a dangerous invasive species in Georgia.

They had an amazing assortment of amazing creatures - Pacific sea nettles and moon jellyfish (the pictures do not do them justice!)

An American alligator and I think some type of seahorse, though I didn't take a picture of the label on the tank.

And last but not least - beluga whales.

I'll end with a couple of pictures of the city. I think what I found most amazing was how green it was this late in the summer.