The NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores

One of the three aquariums in North Carolina is located on a large piece of property in Pine Knoll Shores, less than 15 minutes down Highway 58.  We have been there more than once in past years, and Sunday afternoon was a good day for a return visit, with bright blue skies and not many visitors.  We made the mistake of coming on Martin Luther King’s birthday one year and found ourselves nearly tripping over hundreds of excited children underfoot.

I may not be as excitable as those children were, but I do enjoy wandering slowly through an aquarium, especially this one, which leads the visitor through the different types of waters in North Carolina beginning with the mountains and its lakes and rivers.  In well-designed tanks we saw brown trout and bass and minnows that one might find in the Cullasaja River or one of our mountain lakes.  A high waterfall cascades down the middle of the mountain room, reminding us of Bridal Veil Falls, or perhaps Rainbow Falls in the Great Smoky Mountains.

There was even a very popular exhibit of river otters.  Is there a more energetic and playful mammal anywhere?  Only kittens and puppies come to mind.  They seemed to be enjoying putting on a show in front of wide-eyed children and adults alike.  My newly-discovered ability to post videos to this blog has not been perfected but may work well enough.

 We have to wonder as we gaze out the condo at that bright gleaming ocean in front of us each day about the incredible variety of life under the surface.  Sometimes a dolphin will arc into the air, and sometimes an interesting creature will wash up on shore, and sometimes we will see pelicans dive down, or seagulls swirl around a school of fish.  And of course the fishing boats pass back and forth with their nets dragging deep in the ocean.  But the depths of the ocean are a mysterious place to us, filled with strange creatures, and aquariums like this one provide a window into that other world.

There were seahorses, and long diaphanous creatures I had never seen before, and stingrays, too, which visitors were normally allowed to touch as they circled round and round in a big tank; but it was closed today and I couldn’t help wondering if stingrays were susceptible to the Covid virus.  My photos of the seahorses did not come out well in the dim light, but Martha's did.

And this photo of a lionfish shows just how strange some of these creatures of the deep can appear.

There were turtles and snakes and even a small caiman.  This big loggerhead turtle would  be a clumsy creature on land, but in his natural element he was weightless and graceful.

One of the best exhibits they have here is a huge L-shaped tank in which there is a shipwreck, and it is teeming with fish, some of them big.  In the past, we have seen scuba divers down there, looking out the tank at fascinated children gathered all along it, but this was not a busy day and there were few children.  Still, we saw barracudas, and one menacing-looking nurse shark slowly making his way through the crowd.  It seemed as if the other fish were more than happy to get out of his way, and I wondered what would prevent a shark from attacking one of the smaller fish.  Perhaps they only stock the tank with species that are unappetizing to the bigger predators.

I hope readers of this blog can view these videos.  Because that is what is especially fascinating to me, the way these fish keep moving relentlessly, gracefully, unhurriedly through the water.  I learned that the saying that sharks must keep swimming or they will die is actually not true, but you would never know it from watching this nurse shark circling and circling, and never seeming to need to sleep.

One thing we especially wanted to see were the moon jellies, which we have been seeing washed up on the beach this winter.  They are a beautiful sight even in their death, glistening and translucent, but they can sting when they are alive, although their sting is not as dangerous as the Portuguese Man-of-War; we saw some of them on this beach last September but they disappear in the colder months.

Like the loggerhead turtles, the moon jellies are in their element here, dancing in a ghostly and graceful ballet which is a little mesmerizing to watch.

When we finished seeing most of the aquarium, we went outside onto the marsh boardwalk, which turns into the Alice Hoffman Nature Trail.  There is a good venomous snake exhibit off the boardwalk in a separate building, perhaps because they might terrify some of the younger children (they give some of the adults the creeps, too).  I don’t think I have ever seen a diamondback rattlesnake as large as the one on display there.  And it never fails to give me a start to see how well a copperhead can camouflage itself; I would step on one before I ever saw it.

At one end of the front parking lot there is another fine trail, the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Trail.  There was plenty of time before the gates would close so we hiked its entire length then backtracked, passing only a few people along the way.  The trail climbs up onto some surprisingly steep sand dunes and into a maritime forest.  It felt good to be out in the woods hiking, one of our favorite things to do.

There were some very nice salt marsh ponds, too, and from one Martha spotted a large blue heron rising rapidly from the water and winging out of sight, too fast for my slow camera.

Late December was a good time of year to be hiking along these marshes, we decided, which in the summer would be packed with hikers and might also be a little snaky.  And I remembered that the gnats and mosquitoes were especially bad last September.  We saw this sign as we neared the end of the trail, a reminder of what awaits the unprepared hiker (i.e., one not slathered in insect repellent) in July.

“Prefer to bite herbivores or birds rather than people."  Right.  That is a relief to learn.  Only apply DEET when not in proximity to herbivores and birds.