September 1, 2012: Instead of signage, most of the aquarium now has little screens that show a species in that enclosure, and then move on to another species.
September 1, 2012: Instead of signage, most of the aquarium now has little screens that show a species in that enclosure, and then move on to another species.
So does this work like a slideshow in a digital photo frame? What do you think of it? Sea life centres and a bunch of other aquaria on this side of the Atlantic are doing something similar, though usually with a bit more detail on the screen. The problem is that if a tank has lots of inhabitants, you either have to wait some time to get round to the one you want to see, or you find that many of the species are just left unlabelled. I also find there tend to be a lot more mistakes, on average, than with normal signs.
Waikiki Aquarium had some similar screens for some of their tanks, but also had the regular labels. I can see advantages and disadvantages with this method, but like Maguari I prefer the old-fashioned label.
If I had my own aquarium, there wiould be traditional printed labels identifying the occupants of a tank, with a bit of info about the species, and the TV screen would complement this by showing photographs of the occupants feeding, displaying, etc.
We have those in our rain forest build at John Ball. One Day the one of the signs broke down so my job for the afternoon was to serve as a living sign.
I personally like the old-fashioned signs better. Sure, this is easier to read, as the old signage was small and hard to read, but you must wait a while to see all the inhabitants of a tank. I remember even skipping a tank or two, as there were simply too many fish in the tanks! However, some old-fashioned signage still exists at the aquarium. This was added as part of the renovation of the aquarium, and this is probably the only part I don't like about the refurbishment.
