Aquarium of Niagara features stunning salt water displays

A recent visit to the Aquarium of Niagara revealed several interesting things. For one, the place was clean and pleasant to enter and visit.

And, despite the fact that it is relatively small, it had more displays of saltwater fish, in brilliantly arrayed aquariums, than larger and more modern aquariums I have visited.

In fact, in all of Sea World, I did not find as impressive an array of saltwater fish displayed in such a succession as the Aquarium of Niagara.

What I found at Sea World was a lot of big and depressing displays of large sea mammals being almost starved to perform for fish to eat.

At the Aquarium of Niagara, of course, there are sea lions that perform for their supper, penguins in a small glass cage and half a dozen harbor seals in a too-small pool. The usual fate of animals on display in zoos and aquariums everywhere. And the sad look of boredom on their faces.

The Discovery Pass, sold by the New York State Parks, a package of attractions that includes the Maid of the Mist boat ride, the Cave of the Winds and the Geological Museum also includes the Aquarium of Niagara. So it is natural enough that a tourist coming here would expect to find the inhabitants of the Niagara River housed there.

However, as far as I could gather, there was not a single aquatic creature that lives in the Niagara River in the Aquarium of Niagara.

Of course, fresh water fish are not as colorful and perhaps not as exciting as salt water fish, but a Niagara River display featuring fish such as sturgeon, pike and bass and other creatures such as turtles, frogs, beavers and gulls would be a fascinating and central attraction for a place named the Aquarium of Niagara.

One could go farther and display the varied life in creeks and ponds and of course the Great Lakes. There could be much to learn and display in the Aquarium of Niagara about the life of Niagara aquatics. This would be a great support to tourism in Western New York, which is, after all, the fresh water capital of the world.

In any event, after finding nothing about the aquatic life of Niagara, I bent my mind away from the Niagara and started conjuring up the images of life far away from here, to warm, exotic places where the ocean meets the land. The colors and the settings of the aquariums here were oftentimes stunning.

What impressed me most was that I came face to face, eyeball to eyeball, with creatures in simulated scenes of their own habitat with only a thin glass between us. It is not every day that a shark or a stingray or fish of the coral reef will look you in the eye.

I wondered if they were bored at seeing so many human animals always gawking at them. For me, it was anything but boring to have such a varied group of sea creatures arrayed in an order obviously designed to educate.

Don’t expect Disney-like attractions or things that will overwhelm you by size or glitter. Don’t look for it in sea lions jumping for fish in the center of the building, but look inside the scores of aquarium displays that are the real heart of the attraction, look for the scenes from our hoary past, before the dawn of man, before life left the sea. I imagined these creatures today in their own world, so distant from us and yet not really different from us after all.

They live and breath and understand what they must in order to survive and pass the time of life as we all must do. And face death reluctantly or bravely when there is no alternative.