Newport

Last Sunday, Elena & Patrick took us to Newport for an afternoon at the seaside, the aquarium and the pub.

The sea lions were thoroughly entrenched at the pier, barking continuously and ridiculously like they belonged in a cartoon.






At the fish & chip shop, the catch is labelled with how it was caught and by whom, which is pretty cool.


The aquarium seemed to be quite modern, with a variety of interesting art & decor.



This was carved from a single piece of Big-leaf Maple:



As always, the lion-fish were spectacular - I was surprised to get any good pictures at all though, since I wasn't using a flash and had no tripod.



This eel has cool pointy yellow nostrils:


A universal favourite was the jellyfish area, with a fairly extensive collection of the little & not-so-little guys:


They were not included in the petting tank, however:



Heaps of anemones were really stunning (and photogenic):


And check out the chiton... Yes, this species is in fact an ambush-predator - awesome!


I name this abalone James Bondfish:



Californian sea otters have the market totally cornered on "cute", and they know it.


Puffins, however, are way too tough to care about "cute".


Watching more sea lions from a different perspective was also fun:



It's an Auk.


Thankfully, someone with pretty severe OCD had arranged the gift-shop by species:


And these were just growing outside - so jealous...


We headed up to Seal rock to check out the Pacific coast (from the other side) - it's pretty rough, but gorgeous.




After that, it was off to the Rogue Brewery for beer, dinner and beer - this is the way to the bar:


The whole place smelled strongly of hops, yeast, and happy. Spectacular beers, every one.



Kindly, they supplied tasters for a small fee:




An update on the hippo: Mineral analysis of the urolith revealed pure calcium carbonate, and there were tonnes of small thrombi in the cardiac vasculature associated with extensive, acute infarction. Probably, the brain was the same, but we didn't take it out for practical reasons. Essentially we think the hippo went septic, which induced a pro-coagulable state that resulted in diffuse intravascular coagulation.