Exotic wonders unfold in Tenn. Aquarium's new saltwater exhibit. ...
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Exotic wonders unfold in Tenn. Aquarium's new saltwater exhibit. ...
Exotic wonders unfold in Tenn. Aquarium's new saltwater exhibit
By DAVID PENDERED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/27/05
CHATTANOOGA • The saltwater exhibit that opens Friday at the Tennessee Aquarium will unfold a new world to those who cannot make a 220-mile ocean voyage and dive to a coral reef beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Aquarium visitors will see more than 4,000 sea creatures, including 10-foot sand tiger sharks, stingrays, barracudas and the giant Pacific octopus. They may gawk at richly colored manmade coral structures and the tropical fish that hide in their crevices. They can caress bamboo sharks in a shallow touch tank and marvel at exotic butterflies that flutter and land on their bodies in an enclosed tropical garden.
INTERACTIVE: Go on a dive into one of the new exhibits at the Tenn. Aquarium
RELATED STORY:
Are sharks scary up close? Yes!
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
• The Tennessee Aquarium is about 120 miles from downtown Atlanta. Take I-75 North toward Chattanooga, then I-24 toward downtown Chattanooga. Take exit No. 178 to U.S. 27, northbound, and continue to exit No. 1-C and exit onto Fourth Street; turn right onto Fourth Street and, at the second traffic light, turn left onto Broad Street. Park in one of two parking decks or any of the surface parking lots. Once parked, use the free shuttle bus system.
ABOUT THE AQUARIUM
• Tennessee Aquarium, 1 Broad St., is open daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. The aquarium offers extended hours during the summer. 1-800-262-0695, www.tennesseeaquarium.org.
Ticket prices: Tennessee Aquarium, both the River Journey and Ocean Journey exhibits: Adults, $17.95; children ages 3-12, $9.50; children under 3 years, free. IMAX theater: Adults, $7.95; children ages 3-12, $5.50; children under 3 years, free. Combination ticket for two aquariums and IMAX theater: Adults, $21.95; children ages 3-12, $12.50; children under 3 years, free.
The Ocean Journey aquarium, as the new exhibit is called, provides a glimpse of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. The banks were discovered a century ago by fishermen about 110 miles south of Galveston, Texas. Researchers are still trying to unlock their secrets.
"To find a coral garden growing up from the bottom is absolutely incredible, [and] the environment is dominated by tropical fishes and coral," said Greg McFall, a research coordinator at the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, on the Georgia coast, who spent 10 days last summer at the Flower Garden. "I will love to see the exhibit at the Tennessee Aquarium, to see the Flower Garden's beauty brought to people inland."
The Tennessee Aquarium is banking that lots of people will want to see their new attraction.
Chattanooga is bracing for the opening of the Georgia Aquarium later this year in downtown Atlanta. The Tennessee Aquarium attracts nearly a quarter-million visitors from metro Atlanta every year, which accounts for about 25 percent of total visitation. While lots of metro residents simply enjoy the comfortable nature of downtown Chattanooga, with its free electric shuttles and small-town feel, they could just as well opt for a big city experience in downtown Atlanta.
Tennessee announced its new expansion in September 2002, just a month after Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said he was donating $200 million to build the Georgia Aquarium near Centennial Olympic Park.
The nonprofit Tennessee Aquarium invested $30 million in Ocean Journey. The four-level aquarium contains more than 700,000 gallons of saltwater in a 60,000 square foot building adjacent to River Journey, the new name of the first phase of the Tennessee Aquarium. River Journey continues to tell the story of the Tennessee River in the world's largest freshwater aquarium.
Visitors will begin their tour with an escalator ride to the rooftop Tropical Cove, a forest where the air is thick with humidity. Blue macaws perch near a small stream. The touch tank has more than 100 feet of shoreline so there should not be a long wait to finger three types of rays • southern, Atlantic and cow-nosed • and two species of sharks, the bamboo and epaulette.
Free-flying butterflies live in a gallery adjacent to the tropical forest. Enclosed by surprisingly transparent screens, they will fly around sporting a rainbow of colors and are apt to light on spectators as they tour the garden, with its long waterfall and creek. Rows of chrysalises hang behind glass, giving clear view of the cocoons that are the final development stage for butterflies.
The rain forest and butterfly garden are part of the Tennessee Aquarium's efforts to keep attracting customers.
"We devised the touch tank and butterfly exhibits because our visitors to River Journey had told us they want more things to do, to touch, to feel, to be part of," said Charles Arant, president and chief executive of the Tennessee Aquarium and its related facilities. "We did these exhibits in addition to the big salt water animals people said they wanted to see."
Ocean Journey stops teasing after the rooftop exhibits. The main saltwater exhibit appears before visitors as they descend a ramp and see a clear wall measuring 25 feet wide and 75 feet high. The big acrylic wall still amazes staffers who have spent months preparing the exhibits.
"It's more like looking out the window of a submarine than seeing the views in an aquarium," said Thom Demas, curator of fishes.
Swimming around will be the attention-grabbing sand tiger sharks, which weigh up to 225 pounds, big stingrays and about 3,500 fish that are as colorful as the butterflies. The reef rises from the bottom in bright splashes of yellow, orange and red. The reef's network of overhangs and tunnels provides cover for little fishes that don't want to be eaten and yet want to venture along the 97-foot-long reef.
Demas wants visitors to be sure to pause and watch the giant octopi in a separate gallery called Boneless Beauties. The tank is filled with creatures that have no skeletons • cuttlefish, giant Japanese spider crabs, four different kinds of jelly fish. Amusing sights are in store all around the octopi because they are fed, or "enriched," as the staff said, with food that is concealed in toys such as Mr. Potato Head.
"They are amazingly intelligent," Demas said of the octopi. "We put the food in something like a jar, and they learn how to get it out."
A show with divers in the tank is the next attraction. Four times a day, divers who wear masks with communication devices will describe the exhibit and answer questions from the audience.
Leaving the window, visitors will move past plenty of other chances to see the reef and sea creatures as they make their way to the coup de grace of Ocean Journey.
Visitors will meander through a submarine grotto instead of walking through a transparent tunnel along the bottom of the aquarium. Spectacular views of the reef and sea creatures will be had through big windows and intimate portholes built into the Undersea Cavern.
"It's as close as you can get to feeling like you're seeing a real reef without putting a scuba tank on your back," said Rob Mottice, manager of specimen acquisition.
By DAVID PENDERED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/27/05
CHATTANOOGA • The saltwater exhibit that opens Friday at the Tennessee Aquarium will unfold a new world to those who cannot make a 220-mile ocean voyage and dive to a coral reef beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Aquarium visitors will see more than 4,000 sea creatures, including 10-foot sand tiger sharks, stingrays, barracudas and the giant Pacific octopus. They may gawk at richly colored manmade coral structures and the tropical fish that hide in their crevices. They can caress bamboo sharks in a shallow touch tank and marvel at exotic butterflies that flutter and land on their bodies in an enclosed tropical garden.
INTERACTIVE: Go on a dive into one of the new exhibits at the Tenn. Aquarium
RELATED STORY:
Are sharks scary up close? Yes!
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
• The Tennessee Aquarium is about 120 miles from downtown Atlanta. Take I-75 North toward Chattanooga, then I-24 toward downtown Chattanooga. Take exit No. 178 to U.S. 27, northbound, and continue to exit No. 1-C and exit onto Fourth Street; turn right onto Fourth Street and, at the second traffic light, turn left onto Broad Street. Park in one of two parking decks or any of the surface parking lots. Once parked, use the free shuttle bus system.
ABOUT THE AQUARIUM
• Tennessee Aquarium, 1 Broad St., is open daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. The aquarium offers extended hours during the summer. 1-800-262-0695, www.tennesseeaquarium.org.
Ticket prices: Tennessee Aquarium, both the River Journey and Ocean Journey exhibits: Adults, $17.95; children ages 3-12, $9.50; children under 3 years, free. IMAX theater: Adults, $7.95; children ages 3-12, $5.50; children under 3 years, free. Combination ticket for two aquariums and IMAX theater: Adults, $21.95; children ages 3-12, $12.50; children under 3 years, free.
The Ocean Journey aquarium, as the new exhibit is called, provides a glimpse of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. The banks were discovered a century ago by fishermen about 110 miles south of Galveston, Texas. Researchers are still trying to unlock their secrets.
"To find a coral garden growing up from the bottom is absolutely incredible, [and] the environment is dominated by tropical fishes and coral," said Greg McFall, a research coordinator at the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, on the Georgia coast, who spent 10 days last summer at the Flower Garden. "I will love to see the exhibit at the Tennessee Aquarium, to see the Flower Garden's beauty brought to people inland."
The Tennessee Aquarium is banking that lots of people will want to see their new attraction.
Chattanooga is bracing for the opening of the Georgia Aquarium later this year in downtown Atlanta. The Tennessee Aquarium attracts nearly a quarter-million visitors from metro Atlanta every year, which accounts for about 25 percent of total visitation. While lots of metro residents simply enjoy the comfortable nature of downtown Chattanooga, with its free electric shuttles and small-town feel, they could just as well opt for a big city experience in downtown Atlanta.
Tennessee announced its new expansion in September 2002, just a month after Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said he was donating $200 million to build the Georgia Aquarium near Centennial Olympic Park.
The nonprofit Tennessee Aquarium invested $30 million in Ocean Journey. The four-level aquarium contains more than 700,000 gallons of saltwater in a 60,000 square foot building adjacent to River Journey, the new name of the first phase of the Tennessee Aquarium. River Journey continues to tell the story of the Tennessee River in the world's largest freshwater aquarium.
Visitors will begin their tour with an escalator ride to the rooftop Tropical Cove, a forest where the air is thick with humidity. Blue macaws perch near a small stream. The touch tank has more than 100 feet of shoreline so there should not be a long wait to finger three types of rays • southern, Atlantic and cow-nosed • and two species of sharks, the bamboo and epaulette.
Free-flying butterflies live in a gallery adjacent to the tropical forest. Enclosed by surprisingly transparent screens, they will fly around sporting a rainbow of colors and are apt to light on spectators as they tour the garden, with its long waterfall and creek. Rows of chrysalises hang behind glass, giving clear view of the cocoons that are the final development stage for butterflies.
The rain forest and butterfly garden are part of the Tennessee Aquarium's efforts to keep attracting customers.
"We devised the touch tank and butterfly exhibits because our visitors to River Journey had told us they want more things to do, to touch, to feel, to be part of," said Charles Arant, president and chief executive of the Tennessee Aquarium and its related facilities. "We did these exhibits in addition to the big salt water animals people said they wanted to see."
Ocean Journey stops teasing after the rooftop exhibits. The main saltwater exhibit appears before visitors as they descend a ramp and see a clear wall measuring 25 feet wide and 75 feet high. The big acrylic wall still amazes staffers who have spent months preparing the exhibits.
"It's more like looking out the window of a submarine than seeing the views in an aquarium," said Thom Demas, curator of fishes.
Swimming around will be the attention-grabbing sand tiger sharks, which weigh up to 225 pounds, big stingrays and about 3,500 fish that are as colorful as the butterflies. The reef rises from the bottom in bright splashes of yellow, orange and red. The reef's network of overhangs and tunnels provides cover for little fishes that don't want to be eaten and yet want to venture along the 97-foot-long reef.
Demas wants visitors to be sure to pause and watch the giant octopi in a separate gallery called Boneless Beauties. The tank is filled with creatures that have no skeletons • cuttlefish, giant Japanese spider crabs, four different kinds of jelly fish. Amusing sights are in store all around the octopi because they are fed, or "enriched," as the staff said, with food that is concealed in toys such as Mr. Potato Head.
"They are amazingly intelligent," Demas said of the octopi. "We put the food in something like a jar, and they learn how to get it out."
A show with divers in the tank is the next attraction. Four times a day, divers who wear masks with communication devices will describe the exhibit and answer questions from the audience.
Leaving the window, visitors will move past plenty of other chances to see the reef and sea creatures as they make their way to the coup de grace of Ocean Journey.
Visitors will meander through a submarine grotto instead of walking through a transparent tunnel along the bottom of the aquarium. Spectacular views of the reef and sea creatures will be had through big windows and intimate portholes built into the Undersea Cavern.
"It's as close as you can get to feeling like you're seeing a real reef without putting a scuba tank on your back," said Rob Mottice, manager of specimen acquisition.
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