Missing our friend the ocean

Now that we're back in a city we have been missing the ocean and beach life. Snorkeling around was one of the best experiences we have had so far so we decided today to visit the aquarium here in Kuala Lumpur. It took the monorail, walking and then underground to arrive at the area. The aquarium is near the twin towers so our plan was to visit there before a science museum and then give seeing the towers at night another shot. The aquarium was very impressive and informative. They had a strong message on trying to stop the removal of shark fins, a meat used as a popular dish in South East Asia. They had a horrible graphic video that showed how many of these sharks are caught and their fins removed while they are alive before being tossed back into the sea. It was barbaric and I don't know how anyone could not be moved by it. We then also found out that 100 million sharks are killed each year for this reason, 100 million! Sharks do not reproduce often so this has left pretty much all species of sharks as endangered or vulnerable. Great white sharks, for instance, are now endangered to the point of near extinction. You hear so often about African animals being endangered such as giraffes and rhinos but never of sharks. We had no idea this was such a huge global problem so it felt good to visit a centre where our money is being used to try and confront this issue. They have a strong breeding program of bamboo shark at the aquarium as well, a species that numbers are dwindling. We left the aquarium feeling very moved by what we had learned but also quite drained. We had a late lunch and drinks before both deciding we didn't have the energy to go to science museum today after that. As there was a long wait until night time to see the towers we considered going to the cinema but there wasn't anything we fancied watching enough. Instead we decided to do the museum and towers another day so we headed back to our hotel area which took a good amount of time before returning to our favourite spot Nandos for tea. Our evening consisted of watching the rest of Britain's Got Talent before we discovered the winner by mistake on Facebook! Although it wasn't the full day we had planned it feels good knowing we will get an early night tonight and be well rested for tomorrow.Read more