The Roving Reporter

One fish, two fish...

Posted by: Amy Reiter

Monday, March 26, 2007 9:25 AM

Today we saw the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium -- one of the coolest aquariums I've ever seen anywhere. I watched a manatee show, played a game with a seal and learned about how blue whales went from being land-dwellers with feet to ocean-dwellers with fins (very slowly).

The museum was built right next to the ocean's shore in southern Taiwan, and being so near the water made learning about marine life all the more appropriate and interesting. There was a polar exhibit where the space was actually really cold, a kelp tank where the kelp drifted several stories high, ridiculously huge spotted whale sharks-- which apparently were only babies, and a touch pool where I touched a sea urchin and felt its tiny tentacles cling to my finger for an instant.

All in all, a very cool morning.

Then, after a very long ride, we saw a fishing village, sunken because the people in the village had pumped too much water from the ocean into the land area to make fish hatcheries. Some of their first floors had become partial basements, while others had eroded entirely. Apparently, the government has been trying to get the villagers to move out of their slowly sinking homes, but they refuse.

Then we had a very welcome dinner of plain, boring food like tofu and egg salad, after one too many banquets of fish and eel and pork and things vegetarians like me don't like.

Tomorrow we take a train up Taiwan's southeast coast to the city of Taitung, which is supposed to have a large aboriginal population. Below is a photo of tribe members from the Lai-I tribe, along with, from left to right, Rotary team members Tina Steel and Ngozi Onuora, team leader Shanae Hinkle and me.

Words of the day:
Yi, er, san, si, wu = one, two, three, four, five (but people often don't use the word for four, or have fourth floors in their buildings, because in Chinese it sounds like a word for death)

Amy

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