Sea Seed

It's spring break and I told the kids we would start attacking our "bucket list" this week.  Yesterday we started with Emmy's choice - 3 hours at an indoor playland for her and London (Cannon was a little too old to enjoy it).  Today, we headed out to Sea Seed, a newer attraction on island near an old favorite, the salt factory.  The Sea Seed was London's choice on the bucket list.

Sea seed is a corral nursery/education center whose goal is to raise awareness about the delicate coral reefs around Okinawa and to restore them to their previous glory by raising "seedlings" and then seeding the ocean with them.

The nursery tanks

Baby coral seedlings

From what I could piece together from the information boards, the reefs around Okinawa used to be 90-100% live coral as recently as the early 1970s but through pollution and building, most reefs are now less than 10% live coral.

The kids got a kick out of feeding seaweed to the fish.

White tipped reef sharks

I have to say that I've snorkeled some on this island and I never knew how beautiful coral could be until we saw it in their tanks.  They had a great tank set up with lots of variety of coral and reef fish.  The tank was such that you could look down into it or walk down a ramp and look through windows as if you were snorkeling (without getting wet or cold!).  It was beautiful!

And the whole place was definitely set in a beautiful place, right on the beach and made to look like coral.

Cannon waiting for us on the beach (he'd already been to the Sea Seed)

After we toured the place we walked out the above jetty and had a snack.  Not a bad place to spend and hour or two!