All About Water People

by Utkrishta Mulmi

Photographs by two famous photographers on the loose in New York. Rajendra Mulmi and Sagun Basnet. 

What do you mean fishes and turtles are not people? I am sure, they would say weeee are NOT people. So for the time being we will say all that live are peeeeple. And yesterday, my father sent me a bunch of photos and videos of these water people in an aquarium that he went to during his visit of the US.

Now don’t ask me where in the US. He was in DC, New York, Florida and other places also I bet, so the aquarium could have been anywhere.

Now back to the fish peeeeeple. The fishes that he shared with me were actually in their natural habitats. Remember the piranha experiment we did in Nepal?

When Pallav sir saw the photos and videos, he said well, we could do a little sharing with everyone and we had a great time looking at the photos and videos at school. In their natural habitats were the Piranha, Ranger fish, seahorse, ribboned sea dragon, starfish, shark, rays, emperor penguins, and stonefish.

Eena: Now talking about Piranhas, remember the Piranha study that we did at school? Our fish delivery guy gave us a fish saying that it was from a river in Nepal (not true) and it was very tasty. Pallav sir said, it belonged to the Piranha family. Utu researched the fish and said it was a Pacu to begin with. He was pretty sure so Pallav sir also said, lookie lookie, Pacu have human like teeth. So we all discussed about the Pacu in theory and then Pallav sir tried to open the fish’s mouth to show us the human teeth and got poked in the finger by the teeth which were really sharp. Pacu is supposed to have teeth like Utu (or us humans). So HIS Pacu turned out to be a Piranha, a close cousin and definitely a chicken burger loving, meat eating Piranha!

He had sent me exotic fishes of Australia and Rio Negro. Many of the ones from Australia Eena had not even seen and she was in Australia for many years.  We saw a white crocodile which was pretty cool. The sea horse was the size of a coke can, I wish I could ride a sea horse and go exploring in the deep. Or maybe like we could do a “He’ll be coming round the sea Mountain when he comes!” I could have like have a million sea horses pulling me about.

The ray fish were pretty like Batman. They went through the water so smoothly. Sharks were there but maybe they had lost their teeth, we did not see any on them. The ribbon sea dragons were all hiding because the water had turned off their fire. They would come out and play with the sea horses sometimes though.

The star fish were great and Baba and his friends were allowed to touch them and the sea anemone. They were not allowed to eat them though. And it was a great idea not to put the piranha in there because, I don’t think they would have followed the rules. More likely, they could have bitten my cousin brother Nibu as he dipped his finger in the water to touch the star fish and the anemone.

It was really nice of my father to send me those photos and share his experiences with us. We spent a couple of hours look and discussing and further researching what we watched.

All my friends want to say a big THANK YOOOOOOOU! Me also, of course.

Eena: Hello, sorry that we have woken you up in the middle of the night [That was Utu, instead of opening the file on Skype, he dialled his dad at 2 am]. But I just wanted to say thank you for sharing the videos and pictures with us, I liked seeing the corridor that had the glass ceiling with the rays ;-).

Vidheha: I liked the sharks, horsy fish, and penguins. Thank you for the video.

Shila: I liked the fish that was good at hide and seek, it’s called the sea dragon I learned.

Tina: I liked the starfish and I want to touch it as well some day.

Anita: Thank you. We enjoyed this class. I liked the seahorse very much.

Bishesh: I liked the Piranhas. I like eating them too. Thank you.

Me: hello and I want to come to America now! And I want to replace the girl in the penguin habitat when I come. I loved the rays and the sharks.