Aquariums - Georgia Aquarium - Marine Life - Whale Sharks on Home Services

Dec

Aquariums - Georgia Aquarium - Marine Life - Whale Sharks

posted by admin in Home Depot

AQUARIUMS, like zoos, are weird places. We are uncertain they should exist at all, yet if they are there, we want to see them a fact well known to cities that hope to attract tourists and revitalize commercial districts, and that have built some two dozen aquariums in the last quarter century.

Already more than 4.5 million people have visited the latest and most spectacular example, the Georgia Aquarium, which opened here in November 2005 to a boosterish chorus of oohs and ahhs over the number of gallons, the number of species, the catering by Wolfgang Puck and the IMAX-size tank windows.

The more popular and entertaining aquariums become, the more supporters insist that they educate and inspire conservation. And the more critics worry that aquariums are actually acting as enticing, crystal-clear substitutes for dying oceans.

In that regard, the Georgia Aquarium was particularly ambitious, building the worlds biggest fish tank to accommodate a display of the worlds biggest fish, the whale shark, which can grow longer than 60 feet and about which little is known.

Biologists warned that they could not yet explain the dappled creatures penchant for sinking to depths of 3,000 feet or more, a feat that not even a $300 million aquarium could accommodate. But aquarium officials countered that the whale sharks there were four were saved from the dinner table, bought from Taiwanese fishermen who have an annual catch limit. Their presence, it was promised, would let researchers examine the species up close for the first time. Certainly the aquarium has increased public awareness of a species that few had heard of and that scientists have yet to observe mating or giving birth.

But in January, the attention shifted from positive to negative: Ralph the whale shark, an adolescent, died.

Responding to the outcry, Jeffery S. Swanagan, the aquariums president and executive director, wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the display had opened the hearts and minds of visitors, created a special bond between them and the animals and inspired the public to conserve threatened marine environments.

Critics argue that aquariums have the opposite effect: as exhibits grow more technologically sophisticated, they implicitly suggest that oceans are disposable. What they say is, the natural habitat doesnâ€™t matter, said Randy Malamud, an English professor at Georgia State University and the author of Reading Zoos (New York University Press, 1998). That the awe and mystery of the animals life which is so much dependent on the animals living where it lives that thatâ€™s all irrelevant and can be dispensed with for our convenient consumption.

Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot who built the Georgia Aquarium as a gift to the city, went so far as to promise that it would improve on nature, giving fish a leisurely and worry-free existence. This is like going to the Ritz-Carlton, he said before the grand opening. If you ask them do they want to go back to the ocean, you know what they would say? Are you crazy?

The details of Ralphs death, disclosed a little over a week ago, provided a glimpse of a not-so-luxurious life. Ralph, who stopped eating after the tanks were chemically treated for parasites, had been force-fed for months apparently a common practice at aquariums, even for tiny creatures like sea horses.

Sometimes in science we learn as much through death as through life, Mr. Swanagan wrote. In Ralphs case, one thing we learned was that he died of a perforated stomach, most likely caused by the feeding tube.

Scientists also discovered that a whale sharks eye mechanics and food-filtration systems are more complex than was originally thought. Ralphs death provided the first opportunity for a whale shark dissection, and an aquarium spokesman said several scientific papers will be published as a result.

Yet some scientists argue that the knowledge that can be gleaned from animals in captivity primarily improves their care in captivity.