You know you’re an aquarium nerd when…

You know you’re an aquarium nerd when…

You’re enjoying a nice dinner out, with the family, at an Australian-themed steak house, and you are fixated on the kids’ activity book (I have three children, who are AWESOME, by the way), because there is a picture of ‘The Great Barrier Reef’ that they are supposed to color.

Here is the coloring page:

And here is what I was too preoccupied thinking to focus on dinner or the conversation with my family:

1. Are those amphiprion ocellaris (common clownfishes) or amphiprion percula (percula clownfishes) in the picture. It’s hard to see here, but you can actually count the dorsal spines on the clownfishes in the picture–but you can only see 6…(ocellaris typically have 11 and percula typically have 10…although there appears to be some confusion about that). So the jury is still out on that.
2. I am pretty sure that is a magnificent sea anemone–and I’m impressed that they sketched it semi-realistically

   
3. I’m annoyed at the strange and unrealistic renditions of the ‘fish’ in the lower-center of the page. I’m a fully-grown aquarium nerd critiquing a children’s coloring book at a restaurant, but…come on people
4. Extra bonus, my daughter colored in the fingernails of the sea turtle sammy–now that’s just cute 🙂

I’m sure I’m not alone–do you have any aquarium nerd stories like this to share? Leave a comment below, if you do.

Article written by Al Ulrich