Despite the cheesy name, Kelly Tarlton's is actually pretty cool. We had been meaning to go for some time and a day of awful weather provided the opportunity, since the whole place is underground.
Kelly Tarlton (a male Kelly) built the aquarium in 1985 from some old disused sewage tanks, a couple of miles out of Auckland centre. He seems to have been a bit of a pioneer in aquariums, building a domed tunnel in the tank so that visitors have fish on both sides and overhead. Back then nobody knew how to bend sheets of acrylic into curves, so he invented his own method to make the tunnel roof.
Nowadays, in addition to the impressive tunnelled tank, there is an open-topped stingray tank and a penguin enclosure containing a load of manufactured snow, and king and gentoo penguins. All the creatures were impressive and beautiful, but the vast stingrays were the best for me. A keeper gets into the stingray tank to feed them by hand while giving a talk to the audience, and they come and nuzzle her looking for food. When I say nuzzle, imagine a 2m diameter, 200kg beast launching itself up her body so that the mouth on its underside is over her hand holding the food. I only wish we had had a camera with us.
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