Gatlinburg Aquarium

[esmithiii]

My wife and I went on a date to Ripley's Aquarium on Friday night. Cool place, but also dissapointing. They have acrylic tunnels through the tanks and have an incredible collection of nurse sharks. At feeding time, they had one of their "resident marine biologists" talk to the crowd at the "coral reef" tank (65,000 gallons w/ all kind of aquarium fish and plastic coral/sponges, etc. There were 200+ fish in this tank which has a 12' high 4" thick acrylic walls.

"Any die off" I asked after the crowd had left.

"Some, mostly due to old age of the fish. All these fish have a 3-year life span." the biologist replied.

"Even that emporer angel? That thing is a good foot long"

"Yep."

We went to the "Live Coral" exhibit, which had mostly soft corals, zooanthids and a couple of LPS and some dead SPS. Only Actinic lamps were on. When we asked when the lights came on the "biologist" replied "The lights ARE on. Corals can only stand black light."

Sad. Very sad. My wife was pleased that I didn't go off on the guy.

E

 

[Cabreradavid]

Hi,

You have discovered what is unfortunately the case in a very few aquariums. It takes very little in the way of credentials to call yourself a marine biologist since the term is so catchy. I have myself run into these "ersatz" Marine Biologists on occasion. It makes those of us with graduate degrees in Marine Biology (as such I feel I can call myself a marine biologist) cringe. On a good note, most aqariums, such as the National Aquarium at Baltimore and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have very qualified people working for them.

 

[esmithiii]

I suppose that it is in part due to Gatlinburg being the tourist area that it is.

E