Minnesota Essay: Underwater World

This activity ended in 1996. For information only.

Underwater World

Underwater World, the lowest level in the Mall of America, felt so weird, like a million fish were going to come up and touch you. If you didn't know, Underwater World is a huge aquarium with great examples of extraordinary lakes, rivers, and streams. It also has a dry land area with beautiful ponds, rushing waterfalls, and a muddy beaver dam. In the Beaver Dam for Halloween dead-looking plastic pirates stuck out of the mud and a fake treasure chest lay in the mud beside them. On a regular day, a family of beavers swam and lay in the dam. We stared at giant, beautiful, rushing waterfalls. There were colors from yellows to oranges to reds to blue and greens, but most of the Minnesota fishes' colors were brown and dark green, and really dark blues, and maybe even dark reds. There were hundreds of fat, slimy, rainbow-colored, squiggly fish. Big, dark, staring, waiting eyes looked right at us. All of the fish had gills and fins and most of the fish were open-eyed and stinky. There were alot of big, pointed-nosed, wiggly fish. The fish were gliding low in the still water. Some fish were yawning, moving, waiting, gliding, eating, and some were still. In some spots, it was calmer than others because none of the fish were moving, the water was still and there wasn't so much activity. A Flounder fish, which was flat and had an eye on each side swam flat and had colors like grey, blue, red, and purple. The Rock Beauty had yellow and black scales and the black part looked like velvet. One fish, the greyish-green Shortnosed Gar, was a long, thin, pointed-nosed fish that was gliding through the middle of the big tank representing the Mississippi River. The green sunfish in the Mississippi River was swimming slowly with a bunch of other sunfish near the middle of the water and was a really, really small fish compared to the sharks that were swimming briskly through the saltwater part of the aquarium. Some fish hid behind blue, green, red, yellow, white, and purple coral that almost looked fake. Different corals looked like brains, some looked like cabbage leaves, some looked like plants or flowers, and others looked like bushes. In the section with the ocean fish, it felt like the sharks, big and small, were going to swim up to you and take a bite out of you. By the 5th grade Challenge writing group Alice Smith Elementary Teacher, Kathy Gustafson

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Return to Essays -------------------------------------- Date: 12/3/96 6:29 PM To: Kathy Gustafson From: rroyer@shore.intercom.net Hi Kathy, Thanks for continuing to work on the essay. I just want to let you know that I have to give the magazine to our staff for processing on December 9 so I need to have your essay before then to format it. Thanks. I reallllllly hope that this deadline works for you! Regina Royer Laurel School District Laurel, Delaware, USA ------------------ RFC822 Header Follows ------------------ Received: by hopkins.k12.mn.us with SMTP;3 Dec 1996 18:25:16 U Return-Path: rroyer@shore.intercom.net Received: from 204.183.209.15 (sby09015.intercom.net [204.183.209.15]) by shore.intercom.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with SMTP id TAA06783 for ; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 19:15:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 19:15:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199612040015.TAA06783@shore.intercom.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: rroyer@shore.intercom.net Subject: Through Our Eyes To: Kathy_Gustafson@hopkins.k12.mn.us X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.17