Just visited Nausicaa two days ago and I’m still a bit confused.
Everyone seems to be talking about a large coral tank, but I’ve “missed” it? A part of the aquarium was closed for renovations, so I fear that’s where it is. Without it, the aquarium is in my view just a bit odd. Because beyond all the wonderfull education, it’s just a very mediocre and in some places downright poor aquarium, with a huge tank slapped against the side.
So in all, the good:
- so much colourfull education that at at some point i was starting to wonder who would read it all… if you don’t come out more educated, it isn’t for the lack of trying by Nausicaa.
- the big tank. It’s pretty damn big. And it’s shaped in a way a manta can disappear out of sight. So it did have quite a wow factor.
- the circular tank with amazon fish and caiman is nice. Nothing overly impressive, but fine. Shame it didn’t hold arapaima anymore and a shame it got a bit overshadowed by a 2 year old throwing a tantrum. Bigger shame it had to be my son.
- the underwater viewing of the sea lions was fun, with glass in front, underneath and behind.
- there’s a diamant-shaped aquarium, where you can stand underneath the tip of the diamant. Pretty novel, although it adds only a little in the way of actually viewing the fish inside.
the bad:
- signage. What’s with aquariums and signage? Is it really that hard?
- many of the tanks were on the small side for it’s inhabitants.
- the original aquarium was obviously build for less visitors than the big tank now draws. It get’s kinda cramped with big visitor numbers.
- the sea lion exhibit was bordering between bad and downright ugly. Perhaps there were days such an exhibit was big enough, but I fear those are behind us.
- there’s one manta left in the big tank, and I counted one sea turtle. Besides, there’s a handfull of smaller devil rays. Although there are quite a few reasonably sizeable sharks, the tank for me is lacking in big ticket species as mola, whale shark, hammerheads or manta’s. I know keeping them is not sustainable, but without them it’s like building a giant greenhouse for birds of paradise, and putting finches in it. What’s the point of building an exhibit for species you can never acquire?
the ugly:
- a few of the smaller shark species were slammed into tanks no bigger than someone can have in it’s living room. Sorry, not acceptable.
- the penguin exhibit is downright rediculous. An all indoor affair for African penguins which was just too small. The only worse I’ve seen was SeaLife Koblenz, but at least that was an arctic species so keeping them indoors is somewhat neccessary.
So all in all, with the manta still there the big tank really is still something “must-see”. If it dies, the aquarium has very little. For me, Nausicaa stand far off the excellence of Lisbon Oceanario.