In Monterey Bay Aquarium tank Gets great face lift-San Jose Mercury News

Tank cleaning is never fun. Ask any tropical fish hobbyist with a couple of fish, some gravel and some plants in plastic.

But what happens if the tank is 35 meters deep and has a window with the size of a movie screen?

In what could be the mother of all Reeva projects of aquarium fish, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is putting the finishing touches on the revision of its external tank Bay-a structure of 1 million liters containing more water than the other 90 tanks in combined tank and is ranked among the largest deposits of United States. It is part of a transformation of 19 million dollars which reopens to the public on Saturday.

"It has been like remodeling a House of 30,000 square meters, while 18 people living in it," said David Cripe, Special Coordinator in the Aquarium displays. "We insist on how you were going to move things and take things". "But we do that two weeks ahead of schedule ".

The exhibition, renamed into the open sea has new species in the great tank and other screens in the vicinity, including a sand bar shark Oahu, tufted puffins and other seabirds, show an interactive video wall of high technology in plankton, jellies of deep sea and many art installations. Scientific Aquarium also plans to introduce a young new great white shark in September, the sixth White Shark Aquarium will put on display since 2004.

Any aquarium in the world currently has a great white shark on the screen.

A difficult

trip

On Monday, dozens of volunteer teachers, getting his first glimpse reinforced around painters, welders and other construction workers who were putting the finishing touches in the exhibition. Oohed and aahed tank refurbished marquee, with brilliant schools of sardines his last out languorously floating mahi mahi and hypnotic turtles may not have noticed the long road of scientific and experimental error, setbacks and elbow grease to get this project up to now.

The Aquarium had closed the great tank to the public last August. It seemed to me that bluefin tuna and yellowfin tuna-some of whom had grown to more than 300 pounds of its original size of only 25 pounds, were creating this turbulence in the water, which swam faster than the glass was falling roof tiles in the interior of the tank.

"Green Turtles were eating tiles," spokeswoman for the Aquarium, said Ken Peterson. "They gets no wounded." Spend them. But he did not want to risk.

The tank is necessary an update anyway, I thought that administrators of the Aquarium. Then drained all the water in the ocean. But not before first capture approximately 10,000 copies in the tank. I took three weeks.

Aquarium biologists used a

NET designed to catch the 9,000 sardines. Tuna which surprised three dozen with barbless hooks and fishing line. Attracted to turtles and sharks hammer with food and are raised with deep gurney-water.

Some animals do not. Tuna each were too big to move and had to be sacrificed, Cripe said. A hammerhead shark also was killed. But the vast majority survive the upgrade. They were placed in tanks on trucks and sent to an installation of Aquarius 10 miles north of the Marina.

Workers under the guidance of the contractor, Rudolph and Sletten in Redwood City, who helped install the tank when the first was created in 1996, stripped to the shingles. They covered the walls of glass fiber with new sealant. Install a wave machine to create chop on the water's surface, as in the open sea. Acrylic Windows massive polishing and add new water heating systems-even a "turtle-lift" to make it easier for veterinarians to raise turtles in a farm pen next to the main tank. New lighting causes the colors of the animals in the tank shimmer as they pass in front of the huge window.

Where once the visitors saw the sides and bottom, now they see what seems like endless blue. Is the same view that many of the species seen as it will migrate up to 10,000 miles each year through the Pacific Ocean, a pattern that highlights the new exhibition, based on research with satellite tags facts over the last decade from Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz and other marine resources.

"It feels more like you're seeing now open sea", said Jaci Tomulonis, senior developer of exposure. "Before, it's like a tank of exposure".

Conservation education

Additional exhibitions explaining the creatures, such as the humpback whale, baula and Albatros is scheduled to open in February. And that, as the reformed wing opening on Saturday, they carry messages of conservation visitors 1.9 million Aquarium overfishing, plastic ocean pollution and global warming, part of a trend that has distinguished the Aquarium increasingly since it opened in 1984 with a gift of $ 55 million Titans David and Lucile Packard.

The Aquarium is the main sponsor of a Bill to move forward in the California legislature to ban the trade in shark fins, an issue that has divided the American community and caused considerable political.

"It is not enough to show people animals beautiful Ocean, especially when we know that the threats they face," said Peterson. "We are concerned". "We want people to participate and make a difference".

Please contact Paul Rogers at 408 920 5045.