Three day vacation in Genova; Day 2, part 1: the Aquarium

Here we are on the second day in Genoa, we get up early; today we'll visit a lot of places.
Some ginger and lemon tea and some cookies for breakfast and we are ready to go.
Luckily the strong wind of the day before has gone, leaving a beautiful blue sky, even though the temperature is still around 6° C.
The day starts with what is, in my opinion, the most interesting of the day: the well-know Genoa Aquarium.

Being it a Monday I don't find queue besides a couple of families that, like me, made the strategic choice of avoiding the weekend for this type of visit. Generally this is the technique I use when visiting a city I don't know: first day of exploring and planning(usually the weekend), the second(usually during working days) is dedicated to enjoying with all due calm the most interesting places.
Back to the aquarium, after the entrance staircase we arrive in a big room, with a sort of epic trailer going on repeat, reminiscent of those of big budget Marvel movies. However, don't be fast to judge, this isn't one of those museums/parks that randomly throw around pieces of documentary to cover the lack of material. Absolutely not. Here it's positioned perfectly to hype you up for the visit.

I won't talk in detail about all the things I saw during this wonderful visit, rather I'll give some information to spark a discussion about themes that are close to my heart and are the reason this blog was opened.

The place is spectacular, enormous tanks of various shapes, well kept and looked after in the best of ways. At the beginning we are welcomed by an enormous column of water that makes us feel tiny to say the least. Inside it all the species that some people could call “monstrous”... scorpion-fish and some morays, the latter swimming in circles, forming ascending spirals from the bottom to the top of the tank, to go down again with their sinuous way of swimming.

(The thickness of the glass that separates us from those beautiful animals makes taking good photographs and videos quite a challenge, you'll have to take some precautions and have a really steady hand given the low light).

In this kind of visits, in my opinion, your experience really depends on the immersion you feel towards the environment around you. The management of spaces during the phase of setting up must be perfect, a lot of different factor have to be balanced in a way to not bore the visitors.
Why am I telling you this? Because they manged to do it perfectly.
The pauses between a tank and the next are often filled with really interesting explanatory panels. They give you an all round insight of what is in front of you and often...they throw you the truth of the matter, like a punch in the stomach... one that makes think back to your 2002 Christmas lunch. But we'll get to that later.
For now I would like to give a little advice to future visitors, not only of the aquarium obviously, of every kind of place that offers similar experiences. Always take your time, nobody will give you a prize if you win the record of fastest visitor of the month. I guess that if, like me, you came from a far place you wouldn't like to come back home with the same stock of knowledge you had when you arrived... right? So, visit one room at a time, silently and reading every information that was given to you about habitat, species at risk of extinction and initiatives.
You'll be shocked by how many of the species you are looking at risk of disappearing from nature. We're in front of what could be one of the last specimens in the world, that being in front of you looks at you like you're some kind of weird animal... is it wrong? I don't think so.

Let's talk clearly, I won't keep on talking about how much damage we are doing to our planet, from what I see the modern man doesn't seem to care about a whole species going extinct, an entire forest being tore down to make space for an oil extraction site.
It's clearly more important to put fuel on that enormous car everybody wants, instead of protecting the lungs of our planet or that specific species of amazonian amphibian... who cares, it's all so far from us.

Back to our visit. An area I really liked was the one dedicated to penguins. One may think: “Well they're birds, what are they doing in an aquarium?”
They are indeed birds, but they adapted to marine life, resulting in heavier bones, a cylindrical shape and completely different feathers compared to the majority of birds. (I know there is a ton of other details, but I don't want to turn this post into an ornithological paper). Why am I telling you this? Because the evolution of this wonderful species is made clear also thanks to the shape of the tank itself, in which the visitor can enter from below the surface of the water, below the “ice”. Then, step by step, we emerge on the surface, where the penguins are either diving in the water or napping on the shore near the fake waterfalls. (If anyone is a penguin expert that visited the aquarium, please do tell us if the tank is big enough and properly set up to house all the animals).
That is an example of a well managed and immersive space.

Then you'll see the dolphins, which are placed in a huge tank.
They swim in pairs, along the entire perimeter of their area, coming to greet you if you approach the glass. Then I, strangely, got lucky! When I arrived most of the visitors were three rooms ahead and I was therefore advantaged, in fact me being near them was certainly not as noisy or invasive as the multitude of people that I'm pretty sure crowds this room in the weekend. And yes, I was enchanted by these creatures.
I stayed there for a long time observing them. I saw them play with a balloon floating on the water, I saw them do somersaults and swim harmoniously side by side.
I only left when the technicians of the aquarium approached, starting the daily checks.

Immediately after the dolphins we find a very special area. Something that goes beyond the purpose of showing species unknown to us, something that wants to put us in front of a serious problem. What I'm talking about is the presence of plastic in our seas and oceans. This danger, now widespread and unfortunately very underestimated, should not be ignored. What we do every day, explains the documentary that was projected in the hall, can violate and contaminate entire ecosystems! Plastic, a common good for decades, is not always disposed of as correctly as possible... not at all. In fact, when walking on a beach, we often run into bottles and plastic caps ...and so on and so forth.
Now, we could think that for a fish a form like that of a bottle does not even remotely look a succulent meal ... of course not! However, this wonderful material is not indestructible. The continuous breaking of the waves, the strength of the currents and the tides pushes huge plastic continents, 'cause yes, there are enormous floating island of plastic in the ocean, to a process of erosion and disintegration.
What does it mean? Let's take for example a plastic bottle, it can be destroyed into, pass me the word, "crumbs" even smaller than 1 mm in diameter. Those crumbs seem to be really appetizing for the life forms present in the sea, the smaller fish unwittingly ingest them, not understanding the difference between an edible thing and a harmful one (like many people, yes).
But it is not just aquatic beings that feed on this waste, there are also many species of birds.

The worst thing, however, not counting the ignorance of all those sub-humans who prefer to throw their waste on the ground or in the water rather than in the bin, is to hear certain comments ...
"Look! How many pieces of colored plastic there are!" All smiling obviously.
"...Really! Those colored bags look like jellyfish! How cute!". This said in front of one of the tanks placed next to the jellyfish, to show exactly that resemblance that deceives many turtles (and other species).
You think I'm making them up? I wish. I didn't believe it either when I heard them, I thought it was a joke ... no, it was not.

Sadly, this area was only temporary, in occasion of the exhibition An ocean free of plastic.

Some things that might interest you:

Conservational efforts the Aquarium takes part in: click here, or here.

Associations that work with the aim of a cleaner ocean and safer animal species: click here, or here.