After four days of hiking through the Pyrenees, Frau A and I got to relax in Banyuls sur Mer, France. Since it lies right on the Mediterranean coast, we spent a lot of time near the water. We lucked out with great weather:
At one end of the marina is the Banyuls aquarium. Frau A really loves animals, so we had to see it.
The aquarium is run by the biology and land ecology department of Paris IV University. They also maintain an "underwater trail" in the sea that you can snorkel through, but it was already closed for the year (October).
The aquarium houses "local" (Mediterranean) water life: fish, octopi, coral, sea horses... here are anenome:
The aquarium put special lights on this guy and he seemed to glow:
He had a friend nearby too:
Other anenome also had cool colors:
It was challenging snapping photos of fish: moving fast, through glass, little light. But we got a few:
This octopus was pretty social. He was quite active when we hung around his enclosure a while:
The Mediterranean lobster is very different from the Atlantic kind I'm used to -- no claws!
These were probably the most interesting fish - sorry, forgot to write down the species (darn).
This tank was cloudy, but we caught a small ray and two moray eels in the same frame:
In that same tank were some larger fish. This one poked his nose right at us. You can see the moray, ray, and another fish in the background. There was a lot of action, in what was probably the largest tank there.
The spotted ray reminded us of the ones we saw in the Maldives a year before.
Here is our in-your-face friend again!
In another tank, this angler fish was perfectly still, but did twitch his "fishing pole" every once in a while.
The rock fish also has an interesting bodym and stays very still the entire time.
In a small tank near the exit were a bunch of sea horses, swimming through a seaweed forest. Really nice.
This was probably the most popular tank, with people just mesmerized by these little guys.
The aquarium was a nice, short diversion in town. We headed back outside into the sun after maybe 1.5 hours (it's not very large) but hope to go diving/snorkeling around here on a future vacation.