Autumn twilight fell, and the sky was sprinkled with silver stars. The sea is particularly quiet and pure, and the waves that hit the shore are like a white line, which vaguely outlines the coastline. This is the mid-autumn night scene on the French Mediterranean coast.
We drove out of Nice, a famous tourist city in the French Mediterranean, and headed east along a brightly lit road. Sometimes the road floats from the mountain to the coast like a white ribbon, sometimes it leaves the coast and disappears into the dark shadow of the Alps near the sea. Lights flickered all over the hillside.
About 20 kilometers away, a white line appeared on the road, the national emblem of the Principality of Monaco was erected on the roadside, and a red and white Monaco flag was flying on the flagpole. Before we knew it, we had crossed the border and entered Monaco without going through any formalities.
Monaco is bordered by France on three sides from east to west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It has a population of about 34,000 people, of which about 8,000 are Monegasques. It covers an area of about 2 square kilometers and is slightly larger than the Vatican. It is one of the smallest countries in Europe and is known as a "pocket country". The Principality of Monaco is small, but its maritime museum is world-renowned.
The Oceanographic Museum stands on a cliff near the sea, facing the city and back to the sea. It is 87 meters high and has three floors together with the basement. It is adjacent to the Prince's Palace and is a tourist attraction in Monaco after the Monte Carlo Casino, receiving more than 1 million tourists from all over the world every year.
The museum building is so subtly and harmoniously embedded between the large rocks that it seems to have grown out of the rock. Facing this masterpiece by the famous French architect Dreyfusti, we stood for a long time and were amazed. After 11 years of construction, this maritime museum was grandly unveiled on March 29, 1910 and officially opened to the public.
At the entrance of the museum, there is a statue of Prince Albert I of Monaco, the founder of the Maritime Museum, standing on the bridge of the marine research ship, to forever commemorate this master who made great contributions to marine science. Albert I was born in Paris in 1848 and joined the French Navy in 1870. He had a keen interest in oceanography from a young age, and spent the large sums of money from chartering casinos for marine scientific research. In 1873, he bought the research ship "Swallow" for a multi-year scientific expedition to the Mediterranean. From 1885 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he and many scientists around the world conducted 28 oceanographic expeditions, collecting numerous specimens of marine animals and plants. Albert I dedicated his life to marine research and is known as the founder of marine science.
On the front of the first floor of the museum is a row of 8-meter-high white stone pillars carved from a single block of stone. Between the stone pillars are engraved the names of 12 research ships that have contributed to marine science, including the "Swallow" and "Alyssa I", which were used by Albert I for marine research.
Entering the spacious and bright main hall, I saw a huge glass inlaid on the facing wall. Through the glass, you can see the vast Mediterranean Sea, blue sky and clear water, sparkling waves, and a few seagulls soaring nearby; In the distance, there are several ships that appear and disappear, making people feel like they are in the sea.
Along the visit route, we walked from the main hall to the left hall, which is the marine animal exhibition room, which is full of skeleton specimens of sea beasts and sea fish. In the center of the hall are more than a dozen cetacean skeleton specimens, including a sperm whale with a skeleton of about 10 meters, and another fish with a skeleton of 20 meters. There are many glass tanks on the display racks on both sides of the hall, which are various marine animal specimens, including fish, shrimp, crab, starfish, sea cucumber, oyster, sea anemone, etc. Many of these animals are in the deep sea below 3,000 meters. captured. A fish called "sea rooster" is particularly interesting. Not only is its body mottled, but it can also make a sound that sounds like a rooster crowing in the distance. This fish lives in the Mediterranean and is rare in the world. On the wall on one side of the hall hangs an oval monster named "Moonfish", with two tall fins on either side of its oval body. It lives mainly in tropical oceans.
Next, we visit the Natural Ocean Geography and Instruments Showroom on the right side of the main hall. Entering the exhibition room, the first thing that catches your eye are the various shapes of fishing nets hanging from the ceiling and the edge of the walls: from huge trawl nets to tiny nets for catching zooplankton. The small net is woven with hard-to-see thin threads, and the entire net is crystal clear and made of glass. It was hard to imagine such ingenious fishing gear in the world until we saw these unique displays.
Most of the exhibits in the showroom are the instruments and equipment used by marine scientists to investigate the ocean: water level automatic recorder, current fluctuation automatic recorder, sounding hammer, automatic inversion thermometer at predetermined depth, sampler and so on. Among the many instruments and equipment, two very ordinary sealed champagne bottles stand out. The two bottles were tied to the ends of a one-and-a-half-meter-long rope, one of which contained some sand for use as a measuring hammer, and the other floated on the water. According to reports, when Albert I took the "Swallow" research ship to investigate the Gulf Stream from 1885 to 1888, he used this extremely simple instrument to measure.
The main hall on the second floor displays various models of ships from all over the world from ancient times to the present, bringing people into the world of ships. The West Hall is the showroom for marine physics and marine chemistry. It not only visually shows the characteristics of water at different depths, including water temperature, water pressure and gas state, but also uses a three-dimensional model to show the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans, making us immersed in the ocean world.
The east hall on the second floor is the practical oceanography showroom. More than 100,000 marine animal specimens are displayed indoors, most of which were captured by Albert I when he presided over 28 ocean-going expeditions from 1885 to 1914. Among these numerous specimens, the most striking are the polar bear specimens living in Upenavik, Greenland; Steller's sea lion specimens, which are twice as large as males than females; and in 1877 in A 13-meter-long calamari caught in Novaya Zemlya. According to the museum's administrators, there are also some very precious specimens in the showroom, which are usually not on public display. For example, the St. Petersburg Museum in Russia presented the skull of Steller's Litine manatee to Albert I. This huge manatee living in the Bering Strait was discovered in the 18th century and became extinct 17 years later. Currently, only a few museums in the world have specimens of this manatee.
In the glass showcases around the practical oceanography showroom, there are also many economically valuable fish, sea beasts and sea bird meat caught from all oceans; cod oil and whale oil; shrimp and crabs, mollusks and algae; industrial With fat, skin and various chemical preparations; agricultural fish fertilizer and feed fish meal, etc.
Afterwards, we visit the library of the museum. The library of the Maritime Museum of Monaco is the largest, oldest and most abundant marine professional library in Europe. It currently has a collection of about 25,000 volumes, 3,500 periodicals from more than 80 countries, and numerous marine expedition reports. In addition, there are a large number of photos and negatives of marine animals such as marine fish, shrimps and crabs, shells, and cephalopods. Each photo is the photographer's masterpiece, and it's hard to put it down.
The most interesting of the Monaco Maritime Museum is the aquarium located in the basement. There are 90 fish tanks open to the public in the museum, with an exhibition area of 1,000 square meters; another 100 fish tanks are used for scientific research, storage of newly caught fish and storage of seawater. use. It currently has 450 species, 4,500 marine fish, more than 100 invertebrates and more than 70 corals, making it one of the largest aquariums in the world.
We first came to the large pool with a water storage capacity of 25,000 liters and watched several tropical marine sharks of various sizes chasing and playing in the water. Sharks are very vicious and are the natural enemies of humans at sea, but the sharks in the aquarium are much more docile. Many children ignore the urging of their parents and stop. A terrifying octopus is housed in a large glass tank overgrown with coral. Octopus is a cephalopod mollusk, with 8 long tentacles covered with suckers, a huge body like a pocket, a pair of eyes as bright as human eyes, and a horny beak like a parrot beak.
The second jar houses a large tortoiseshell, which was brought from the Azores more than 80 years ago. Along with the big hawksbill there are many smaller hawksbill turtles, which are very pleasant to swim around in the water. In another glass tank decorated with shipwreck models and undersea hills, moray eels, which belong to the eel material, are raised, showing their sharp fangs. These moray eels are native to tropical oceans, but are often caught in the Mediterranean. According to legend, in ancient Roman times, the moray eel was considered to be one of the most dangerous and ferocious fish. When other fish encountered it, it would be torn to shreds like criminal slaves.
Thousands of tropical ornamental fish are housed in a row of glass tanks overgrown with coral and seagrass. The fish of different sizes, colorful and flower-like paintings, sometimes in groups, sometimes in pairs, chasing and playing in the water, are very interesting and make us linger.
Sea anemones and crinoids in glass jars look like strange, fluffy bouquets from fairy tales. In other glass tanks, people can see starfish, sea shrimp, sea crabs, seahorses, sea cucumbers, etc. The sea urchins with thorns as thin as knitting needles about half a meter on their bodies are creeping slowly, which is particularly eye-catching.
After visiting the aquarium, the hospitable curator Nadiki Unais invited us from afar to her office. After pouring coffee for us, the curator said enthusiastically, please come to the office to sit, one is to let you rest and reminisce about what you have seen and heard in the aquarium; the other is to briefly introduce how we use modern science and technology Take care of these "VIPs" in the water. She quickly said that it is not easy to run an aquarium well, and the most important thing is to create a real ecological environment; the aquarium should not be regarded as a simple fish tank, but should be regarded as a life system. In recent years, we have innovated the aquarium by applying modern science and technology. Currently, we have two ecosystems, the tropical marine ecosystem and the Mediterranean ecosystem. As far as tropical marine ecosystems are concerned, we have made encouraging progress in cultivating corals and establishing coral ecosystems. We created the exact same environment in the tank as the underwater photos taken in the natural environment, i.e. the same light density, the same fish density, the same coral and marine plants, and many other details. In addition, in order to make the aquarium have vitality, it should also pay attention to the biological cycle. Freshly caught fish should be placed in a reserve tank for quarantine to avoid contamination of the fish tank open to the public. They can be moved into the fish tank on display after half a year, and ecological balance can be achieved after a year.
In terms of technology, our aquarium has extensive experience. The central information system continuously monitors the technical equipment of the aquarium and the physical and chemical parameters of the water temperature, salinity, hydrogen ion concentration, oxygen concentration, etc. of the main fish tank. 30 important fish tanks are monitored 24 hours a day and night through 60 depth sounders and 130 sensors. Through these technical means, the safety of our "VIPs" in the water is ensured.
From the light green aquarium to the sunny street, we once again cast our admiration at the statue of Albert I, the founder of the Monaco Maritime Museum standing at the entrance of the museum, thanking him for establishing this museum to spread marine science for future generations. palace.
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