Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
The whale shark is the largest fish in the sea. And it would take an enormous aquarium
to hold a whale shark. I'm here at the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world,
but they don't have a whale shark....they have four!
The Georgia Aquarium is one of the worlds most spectacular. It houses exhibits ranging
from coral reefs to kelp forests, salt water to fresh water, warm water to cold water,
and just about everything in between.
But there is no doubt that the 6.3 million gallon Ocean Voyager exhibit is the most impressive
part of the Georgia Aquarium. It's as deep as a three story building and the main viewing
window is larger than a movie theatre screen, creating a fantastic place to sit and watch
the fish go by.
I enjoy the bubble window where I can relax and watch the sharks!
There is also a tunnel through the Ocean Voyager so people can walk underneath the marine life,
which includes some of nature's most magnificent animals like manta rays and whale sharks.
Keeping manta rays and whale sharks in captivity is difficult. First of all, these are huge
animals! Mantas grow larger than a car, and whale sharks larger than a bus! So they need
a lot of space. But they pose another interesting challenge as well—both are filter feeders.
In the wild they strain their planktonic food by swimming with an open mouth and capturing
small animals from the water on their gill rakers.
In an aquarium, there is no plankton. Aquarists had to train the animals for hand feeding.
To learn how they feed the mantas, I make my way to the top of the Ocean Voyager exhibit,
a nearly football field-sized fish tank! There I meet Chris Coco, the curator of zoological
operations.
CHRIS: We will be staging here and this is where we're going to jump and help us load
the ladle.
He introduces me to biologists Christy Ihlo and Kelly Maples, the aquarists who are going
to show me how to feed the mantas.
JONATHAN: Alright
CHRIS: This is Christy and Kelly.
JONATHAN: Hi nice to meet you.
CHRIS: Jonathan Bird.
JONATHAN: I'm Jonathan, nice meeting you.
CHRIS: These two are the biologist up that work the animals everyday.
JONATHAN: You guys are lucky.
The mantas are fed a combination of krill and small fish from a ladle.
Since the mantas can't swim in place, they have to be fed while they swim by gently ladling
the food out in front of their mouths.
JONATHAN: Wow fantastic. Here we go. Fill it up? About that much? That's good. Excellent.
After observing a few times, now it's my turn to try!
JONATHAN: Okay. Then you just trickle it out?
CHRIS: "The key is to not dump too soon. She's going to stick with you and stick
with the ladle so."
JONATHAN: Little more or is that enough? Umm I am a little nervous! There's all these
people watching I don't want to mess it looks so easy, up but I know it's not
KELLY: The one thing we do ask. Though... The one thing it can be a little difficult
when you get a little water when you go try to keep the ladle out in front of her. She
gets kind of moving fast, it is possible to kind of hit her in the face with the ladle.
JONATHAN: How's that? All right! Whew! Thank you very much. Thank you so much! That was
cool. How many people get to do that? I got to feed a manta ray! That is so cool!
Feeding the whale sharks is even more complicated. It involves the aquarists using small boats
to keep ahead of the moving whale sharks.
This is like a precision ballet of whale shark feeding. These ropes go all the way across
the tank and each aquarist has to pull themselves along in a boat, scooping out the food, staying
just ahead of the whale shark, but what's really amazing is that each whale shark gets
a different diet, so they are only feeding one particular shark, and the sharks are trained
to only follow one particular boat. The best part of it is nobody bumps into each other,
it's amazingly well orchestrated and I really can't imagine how long it took to train
the sharks to do this.
While I get the bird's eye view of the feeding from above, the aquarium visitors get the
fish eye view from below in the tunnel with the sharks feeding directly overhead.
If feeding these animals looks a little complicated, imagine how hard it was to get them here!
It all started in Taiwan, where the sharks are hunted for food. The Georgia Aquarium
teamed up with a local fisherman to capture a live whale shark. Once they had it in a
pen, they transferred it to a specially-made sling. Then it was transferred into a custom
tank with life support for an overseas flight. Finally the shark was flown on a private charter
across the Pacific all the way to Atlanta, where it was driven to the aquarium. It's
quite a journey for a shark!
Given how expensive and difficult it is to get whale sharks all the way to the Georgia
Aquarium, the staff isn't taking any chances when it comes to their care.
The rooms where food is prepared are nearly as clean as operating rooms.
And the water quality is constantly monitored. I spend some time down in the pump room with
John Masson, the assistant manager of life support.
JONATHAN: John, this place is huge. Tell me about these pumps.
JOHN: Well, here at the Georgia Aquarium we have about thirty six 15HP pumps on this side
of room, thirty four 25hp pumps on the other side. Which means we pump about 140 thousand
gallons a minute through this room, which is enough to turn over 6.3 million gallons
in under an hour.
JONATHAN: So you can pump the entire exhibit's 6.3 millions gallons in 1 hour?
JOHN: Yeah we actually can. It equivalent of one of these pump can actually fill a swimming
pool in about 15 minutes. Which is about 30,000 gallons, so each about 2,000 gallons per minute.
JONATHAN: WOW!! That's a lot of water
JOHN: It's a lot of water.
JONATHAN: I notice there are no leaks.
JOHN: We try to minimize all our leaks at least. Yes.
JONATHAN: Good plumbing!
JOHN: Yeah. It's nice.
Now you might be wondering, if you're in Atlanta Georgia and you want to have 6.3 million
gallons of ocean water, what do you do? Well, Instant Ocean...gigantic bags of powdered
sea salt and minerals—mix it with fresh water and you have got ocean!
And I'm about ready to try diving in this inland ocean, so I head upstairs for my briefing
with divemaster Devon Fleming.
DEVON: Alright so basically once we get down here we'll get you guys get set up in the
locker room. We're going to throw in the dock and move your gear down there. It's
also basically valet diving. So once we get done with the briefing, you guys are going
to get changed and head down to the dock. Put your fins, mask, and gloves on. We get
your gear put on for you guys and ask then you guys to do a forward roll into water once
your divemaster clears you to go.
While I go and get my gear on, they put the dock into the water. They don't leave it
in all the time because the animals might injure themselves on it.
Now, the moment I have been waiting for all day!
JONATHAN: Oh look they give me sign so I won't mistake my gear for anyone else's. You know
what's interesting about this is they don't want to get any containments into the exhibits,
so they don't want us to even use our own dive gear. We have to use wetsuits from the
aquarium. A BC, regulator everything. They where real nice though and let me use my own
fins, but first we had to put them into disinfectant so they are now extremely clean. Yeah they
won't hurt you at all.
JONATHAN: Can I go in now?
OFF CAMERA VOICE: Yes you may.
Okay, let's go check it out. There's a whale shark right under me!! That's pretty
cool!
Before I even have my camera, a whale shark swims silently right below the dock. It's
hard to believe I'm in a giant fish tank with a whale shark!
ANNOUNCEMENT FROM UNDERWATER SPEAKER: Welcome to the World's Largest Aquarium. Enjoy your
dive and tour with Devon and five or six thousand of your favorite friends.
On the bottom, a Great Hammerhead comes over to check me out!
I follow Devon down towards the deep end of the exhibit, and Tallulah the manta ray swims
over to say hello.
Soon I pass over the tunnel with lots of people inside. They are looking up at me and I can't
help but think how lucky I am to be able to do this dive. I wave to the kids and keep
moving with Devon to the deep part of the exhibit.
A whale shark, with a school of jacks keeping him company swims over me. The whale sharks
move around the huge tank in circles and figure eights. They are used to the divers and don't
mind us at all.
There is so much marine life in this exhibit that sometimes I forget I'm doing a dive
in an aquarium. My camera moves from whale shark, to Great Hammerhead. Then on to Nandi,
the other manta ray, doing barrel rolls. Then back to another hammerhead.
Through the enormous viewing window, the crowd watches the action—a sand tiger shark passing
right in front of the glass.
The experience is almost overwhelming. It would take quite a few dives to get used to
this!
I just can't believe my eyes—there are so many fish!
On the bottom, a sawfish catches my attention. This is a kind of ray with a saw-like nose
for hunting prey. I have never even seen one of these in the wild but they have nearly
a dozen of them in this exhibit.
One of Aquarium staff divers peacefully enjoys a sand tiger shark lazily drifting by. In
spite of their fierce-looking teeth, these sharks are no threat to people. They eat smaller
prey. Soon my dive nears the end.
On our way back to the shallow end of the exhibit, I pass once again over the tunnel
with the people looking up. And Tallulah buzzes by again as if to bid me farewell.
Devon gives me the signal to head to the surface. It was such a short dive...I don't know
if I can bring myself to getting out of the water.
I have never been on a dive with so many species of fish. I don't even know where to point
my camera. I've got to go back in.
Maybe they won't notice if I stay just a little while longer. This is one dive I just
don't want to end.