http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTXinF8ZVCo

Apparently, the footage was taken in a lake and the jellyfish are non-stinging. Let me just say, if I went underwater with my nice little goggles on and found this I would FREAK out.

The otter tank made me laugh, I confess, the last time I was there. While my family was on the upper level taking pictures I wandered down to where they had a little jazz ensemble playing. (They took requests even! Brubeck!)

Very little beats their jellyfish, though, for sheer fascinating-ness. Jellyfish still kind of terrify me; thanks to Discovery Channel and their insistence that jellies are taking over the seas. AHH. But they’re soooo prettyyyyy.

Guy Debord sprang to mind a lot, as we wandered around: “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” (from his Society of the Spectacle.)

Of course the zoo and the aquarium’s raisons d’etre are to represent a nature that we, presumably, don’t have the opportunity to experience directly. So that we may be inspired to go out and experience it directly, and/or support its conservation. Presumably.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has located stores in several spots throughout its two buildings, so a visitor needn’t go too far before ducking out of the exhibit fray to purchase stuffed versions of the real McCoys swimming about. Or books about them. I’m assuming that some of the proceeds from the sale of this commercial foam helps fund their conservation and research and educational arms. And opposite the stores are little “Take Action” stands, where folks could learn about current campaigns, write postcards to their local elected officials, and so on.

So there you go. Both/and.

But the jelly fish are fabu. If someone hasn’t made a screen saver out of video of them, I’d be surprised.