From the Briny Deep

A couple of photos from the Seattle Aquarium, taken way back in April. These photos didn't turn out well at first, and what you see here is the result of a great deal of GIMP-fu, erasing bits of glare from the flash, fingerprints, weird reflections. I don't claim to be a photography guru; I'm just happy I could salvage something from the original mess.

Sadly, I've forgotten what kind of fish these are. Likewise, I know the next photo is of a salmonid of some kind, but it's been so long I don't recall if it's a steelhead, or a chinook salmon, or a rainbow trout, or whatever. And I'm sure it was taken at the Bonneville fish hatchery, again way back in April, prior to this year's backyard cookout season. So this particular fish may still be there, or it may not.



I'm probably losing native Northwesterner points by admitting this, but if I go fishing (very rarely) I don't catch anything, and the fish sure don't look like this (anymore) down at the grocery store. So I have to admit I can't tell salmonids apart by sight, generally speaking. Now, I can say with confidence it isn't a shark, or an angelfish, or a seahorse, or a stingray. The lack of whiskers suggests it isn't a catfish either. And it doesn't really look like an eel or a lamprey, either. The fact that it's in this pond suggests it isn't one of those freakish deep-sea fish with the huge teeth. And it's not a jellyfish or a starfish since those aren't actually fish. So I guess I can swing a bit of basic taxonomy, but only up to a point.



The octopus mascot outside the Greek Cuisina restaurant in downtown Portland. Yes, I realize it looks like an escapee from a small town parade float. People (myself included) roll their eyes at it, and at the restaurant, a little. Although that doesn't mean I'll say no to a couple rounds of ouzo and a plate of garlicky stuff I can't pronounce, and after the ouzo I might be willing to break a plate or two, you know, just to keep it real and all. Besides, it's bad for business if your restaurant's mascot is actually scary.

Speaking of cephalopods from the deep, here is the absolute coolest vanity license plate in the entire universe. Ever. Mostly because of the little red handprints...

[Okay, okay, I admit it. I'd started to think the previous "mildly nsfw" post was maybe a little crass and juvenile, and I wanted to scroll the thing down the page a little, just so it's not the first thing people see when they come here. And I had a few vaguely maritime but otherwise unrelated photos lying about, and its true that I'd been playing around with GIMP, trying to clean up the top photo a bit, primarily just to get more of a feel for the program. So anyway, I had the photos handy, and came across the links about that license plate -- go click on them now, if you haven't already -- and I thought I could get a cheap filler post out of 'em. And here it is, apparently.]