Phuket (Pronounced Poo-ket) Aquarium:

Sea urchin and cup coral.

One reason I picked the hotel I did was because the aquarium is right next door.

They have a nice collection of giant groupers and appear to be raising green sea turtles. Lots of their marine specimens are the "pickled" kind and there was very little "live" coral. Still, I enjoyed perusing the exhibits and trying to find examples of marine life that we don't have in Hawaii.

I understand that their main focus is on research--and I hope that extends to conservation. They had lots of info on that, so I hope it's true!


Shy eel. They had some huge electric eels but I couldn't get a decent photo of them.


Very cool lion fish that didn't want to stay still to get its picture taken! (These have very toxic spines.)


Brown-Banded Bamboo Shark. This unusual species can apparently lie on the bottom like our white tip reef sharks. Not many sharks world-wide can do that; they usually have to swim to be able to breathe. So I found this to be an interesting exhibit.


Groupers swimming in a rather murky tank.

This is a kind of fishing boat with a scoop net that has been banned in some areas because it harms the reef and takes everything on it. Should be banned in many more areas!

A sign said that this is their research vessel. Visitors could not go out on the pier to check it out.

They had at least four huge tanks of young turtles like this at the back of the complex but there was no one in the whole aquarium to explain what they intend to do with them--or explain anything else, either. (They need a good volunteer program like Maui Ocean Center.)

Young green sea turtles scrapping over food.