Georgia Aquarium



It was a foggy, drizzly morning on the day we were to leave. I wanted to go and walk around Turner Field, but decided to hit up the "world's largest aquarium" instead.



The Georgia Aquarium is about a 15 minute walk from the Georgia World Congress Center and is adjacent to Olympic Centennial Park. According to their website, it is the largest aquarium in both square footage and amount of water used in the exhibits; the size of the facility is 550,000 square feet and the exhibits (combined) contain just over 8 million gallons of water. The building, constructed to look like a giant ship, took 27 months to build, and the 100,000+ fishes from 500+ species are caught, purchased, or traded from other aquariums.

As you enter the building, 2 "walls of fish" form a hallway that deposits you into the large central arena (shown below), from where you can choose the different exhibit themes.

I took a right, at random, and headed towards "Tropical Diver"

In addition to Jellyfish, sea horses, cuttlefish, and families of clowns, this exhibit featured one of the largest living reef exhibits found in any aquarium in the world.


This is the main living reef exhibit. This was so incredible. In addition to the black tip reef sharks, parrots, wrasses, clowns, tangs, angels, and the myriad living corals, the entire reef was subjected to an artificial tide that was visually stunning. The tide-effect is of course important for the health of the specimens. Although its hard to see here, the window of this tank curved such that the upper portion of the tank curved towards the audience. If you were to stand about 6-10' from the tank and looked above you, you would see water. The tide machine was housed in such a way that you could see the waves break over head, and the picture below is of one of the reefsharks directly above my head.


this one was hanging out as the waves broke above him/her.


another view of the reef. This was the closest i've come to the Fijian reefs in years!


this tunnel is part of the "Ocean Voyager-Journey with Giants" exhibit. This is underneath a gigantic 6 million gallon tank and from here, you can look up at the nearly 100,000 fishes representing the Meso-American barrier reef of Central America. It is the second largest reef system in the world topped only by the great barrier reef of Australia. From this 100' tunnel, you can see groups of stingrays "flying" in formation, hammerhead sharks, enormous groupers, schools of travelly jacks, toothy cubarra snappers, and the main attraction, the whale sharks.


And when you exit the tunnel, you are presented with this: the second largest viewing window in the world at 23 feet tall and 61 feet wide. The 6 million gallons of this tank are recycled (filtered) every 90 minutes! Here is one of the whale sharks. Its hard to describe in words what it felt like to sit and watch these magnificent creatures. it was awesome.


there are 4 whale sharks at the aquariums, 2 males and 2 females. the males are about 15' long, whereas the females are about 25' long. they grew 7' last year alone! the tanks are capable of holding 6 fully grown (35-40') sharks.


Although a little blurry, the glass column to the right of this man sitting down represents the thickness of the the size of the glass in the window...
the acrylic is 1.99 feet thick, the window is made from 3 pieces GLUED together, and weighs 120 tons. The panels were manufactured by Nippura Co. of Japan.



hands on displays...i'm not really a fan of these.


there were these funny creatures too, and i think this kid is seeing the disconnect...


pirahnas.

go to the aquarium, if you are in Atlanta. It was worth the visit and $25 entrance fee. skip the movie though, unless you have kids.



Posted: Wed - October 18, 2006 at 07:54 PM          

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