A few weeks ago my family and I went to Las Vegas, Nevada. We saw many things but what I liked best were the aquariums. At a hotel called Caesar's Palace there was a large aquarium with Cow-nosed rays, a huge Southern Stingray, a bunch of Port Jackson sharks and a lot of colourful fish including a few red and white striped Lionfish with poisonous spines.

We also saw them during feeding time. Divers went into the tank and dropped shrimp to the sharks. The Cow-nosed rays were fed by hand because if food was dropped to them other fish would get it first. The Southern Stingray was trained to sit on a stone table and then a diver would hand-feed it. Then the diver swam around the tank and dropped food to all the fish.

Another aquarium called Shark Reef was in a hotel called Mandalay Bay. It had about thirty aquariums in all, as well as a glass tunnel that you could walk through. There was a Komodo dragon, a crocodile, a large Monitor Lizard, piranhas and stingrays. They also had many sharks: black-tipped reef sharks, zebra sharks, and oceanic white-tip sharks. Then there was the huge tank. It was designed to look like you were looking out of a shipwreck. It had two giant sea turtles, barracuda, 6 foot long sawfish and more sharks. They had 5 foot long nurse sharks, 6 foot long sand tiger sharks, 6 foot long sandbar sharks and there was one large shark that looked like a tiger shark.

For anyone who likes sharks and rays,

you can learn more about them by reading:
Sharks and Rays by Leighton Taylor. You can also see the aquariums that I mentioned on the Internet by going to Youtube and typing in: Caesar's Palace aquarium, or Mandalay Bay Shark Reef aquarium.

By: Lauchlan Toal

KTM Young Writers