I came to Lisbon for some work meetups. And everyone in this work team had to vote for one fun group activity. This is how I landed up at the Lisbon Oceanarium 🙂

If you are wondering about the difference between Oceanarium and Aquarium (I was *geek alert*) – any aquarium that provides an ocean habitat for its marine life can be considered an Oceanarium. And this is exactly what we get at Oceanario de Lisboa, Europe’s largest indoor aquarium.

The central habitat. We can view this tank from many windows all around it… it is the central habitat around which our entire oceanarium walk happens.

There are two levels to this oceanarium, the top level and the bottom level. And each of these are split into 4 sections dedicated to 4 oceans

Temperate Pacific, Antarctic, Tropical Indian and North Atlantic Ocean habitats can be found here

These habitats are cool (not necessarily in temperature 😉 ) but it is quite a quick walk through them…

I was sort of unimpressed when I finished the upper circuit. But anyway, this was not the exit point, the way now went down….

This is where the fun starts. Because all of a sudden there are windows into the bottom of the habitats we saw earlier. And all of a sudden a whole new world opens up!

Must say, I have understood one thing about Ocean worlds and Life, the real treasures lie deep.

😉

And this lower level was quite amazing. There were so many different varieties of marine creatures. Thumb-sized-fluorescent frogs to glowing blue Jelly Fish, Eel farms, huge crabs and lots more.

In general, I have been excited to see aquariums especially the “water tunnels” where one can walk through the entire tank in a tunnel. But since I have been cycling and camping in the open countryside of many countries, I am not too charmed by these closed and controlled environments. Moreover, there is also the element of wild creatures in captivity. So I have to say that however impressive this place was, I still longed for ‘real’ exploration of such worlds.

Underwater exploration tempts me but I find the process too tedious. The first requirement for such exploration is an instructor – and here itself I find myself uneasy. There is a reason I am a solo traveler 😀 But let’s see, maybe in the future, you may read posts about my deep diving adventures. In fact, I now remember a cool diving instructor lady I met in Taiwan. I felt quite comfortable to go diving with her, maybe I will try that sometime.

Have you explored any underwater worlds?