A visit to Birch aquarium, San Diego

This is my first in the series of blogs that deal with an issue that is close to my heart, nature. As my first step I decided to visit Birch Aquarium at San Diego. Birch Aquarium lies nestled against the pacific Ocean at La Jolla. The aquarium founded in 1905, is a pioneer in oceanography and states it primary goals as spread awareness about the oceans through creative exhibits, programs, and activities designed to help people use critical thinking, and to make science relevant to their daily lives.


If you ask me I would say that the size of the exhibit area is modest, with maybe 20- 30 tanks in total , but the work that goes behind the scenes is tremendous with data oceanic data collection centres spread over 100 countries and various points in the international waters. In fact there are some robots designed that submerge in the oceans for a months time, collect data, pop up and then relay the data over to satellites collecting and collating them.

The exhibits involve anything from Jelly fishes to Sharks, with explanations including their habitat, the various challenges they are facing to exist and so on.

I found that the visitor population was mainly consisted of kids and families, and the aquarium indeed provides ample opportunity for photography. The best thing I found about the aquarium is that they are eager to share the information that they are collecting and have a lot of interactive programs. Which makes it a highly desirable place for an inquisitive mind.

There is an opportunity to interact with the research scholars and scientists on every third Saturday of the month. I was not aware of this and reached late. I plan to attend the interaction program next month though. (Hopefully)



Overall the staff are very knowledgeable and are patient enough to explain things over and over to each one visiting the place. I plan to visit Birch aquarium in the near future and follow up on this blog series soon.