Here is the Visitor Experience (a version with pictures of all the mammals and birds and a few of the fish and invertebrates is attached)(the numberse tie into the key and drawings attached to the prior post):
C. Visitor Experience
You enter at the Zoo’s South Entrance or exit the monorail at the Antarctica/Cape Horn station. Your destination is Antarctica and you are thinking penguins, of course, but it is a large sculpture of life-sized albatrosses, both on the ground and in flight (54), which first catches your attention. A sign explains that they are the largest of the birds that nest in the Antarctic Ecozone, made up of the Antarctic Continent and Subantarctic Islands Regions, but they are too large and too pelagic in nature to be kept successfully in captivity. You will, however, have the chance in these exhibits to see many other birds and all the seals native to these regions, regions that in nature are home to millions of sea birds and sixty percent of the Earth’s seal population as well as, of course, the ancestral home and center of distribution of the planet’s penguins. It is also a region in whose oceans many species of cetaceans swim, and three of those are here, too. Welcome to Antarctica and the Islands of the Southern Ocean: Penguins; Pinnipeds; Petrels; Prions; Porpoises; and More!
You head for a group of buildings that resemble snow and ice covered hills and mountains, with glaciers extruding between them. The landscaping is bare: nothing more than grass. Just past the albatross sculpture is a large, fifty foot high aviary set against the nearest snowy, icy, rocky hill (28). You can feel the chill coming off of the salt water pool as you watch sea birds soar and then skim food from the water whose waves lap at the rocky shores. The signs help you identify the birds, all of which actually nest on the continent of Antarctica: Snow Petrels; Antarctic Petrels; Cape Petrels; Wilson’s Storm Petrels; Antarctic Cormorants/Shags; and Antarctic Terns. Petrels, you learn, are named for St. Peter because their foraging flight so close to the sea’s surface with their legs hanging down makes them look like they are walking on the water.
You stroll along the aviary and then enter into the icy hill. It is a winter morning outside with the sun faint and low but inside all is as bright as a summer day at noon; the natural light entering from the skylight is augmented by artificial lighting. You are warned that the building is kept on the day-night schedule of Antarctica, where it is currently summer with almost perpetual sunlight. Despite the brightness, thermometers in front of you show that the air and water temperatures inside the exhibit are just slightly above freezing, temperatures that in six months will be below 32°F/0°C, when the exhibit will also be only dimly lit with near night around the clock, the skylights covered. In front of you, fresh snow falling on them from above, are the five species of penguins that nest on the frozen desert continent, Antarctica itself, and its ice shelves and pack ice (29): the Adelie and Emperor Penguins, found only on Antarctica; and the Chinstrap, Gentoo and Macaroni Penguins. The exhibit, counting land and water surface, is roughly 18,000ft²/1800m², and the water is twenty-five feet (almost eight meters) deep, all providing a home to 100 penguins. They can swim in an entire circle, building up enough speed to “porpoise” at the water’s surface.
You stroll around the exhibit, whose water surface is about two feet above the floor, so you have a nice view of the birds swimming at the surface and a glimpse into the depths below and are eye to eye with many of the penguins waddling about on the islands and shores and rocky outcroppings in the center of the exhibit. On the wall opposite the birds is a set of fossils and explanations showing how penguins evolved (30), from the Cretaceous forward. You come to a ramp that heads down, and you have a choice. You decide to head down, all the way down, to the “deep dive” level. It is dimmer there, since not all the light penetrates the two and a half stories below the water’s surface. But the penguins don’t mind, chasing the few fish and squid left over from the morning feeding that had not yet been caught and eaten. Artificial rock and ice disguise the steel supports for the land back up at the surface, and the penguins demonstrate just how well they can “fly” between them. You work your way around the penguin tank, and you have a brief glimpse into the corner of another deep pool, this one home to a Leopard Seal (33), which would gladly do with the penguins what they are doing with the fish and squid. Then you continue your trip at the bottom of the Antarctic waters, strolling past similarly deep tanks for Crabeater and Ross Seals (31 & 32), the smaller of the Antarctic Seals and, like the penguins, prey for the larger Leopard Seal, into whose pool you have another glimpse on the other side past the smaller seals.
Just beyond the Leopard Seal, you are back in penguin land, a mirror image of the Antarctic Penguin exhibit, but this one (38) belongs to the penguins of the Subantarctic Islands, some the same as on the continent, and some others you did not see before: Chinstrap; Gentoo; King; Macaroni; Royal; and Southern Rockhopper Penguins.
You head back up one level, to the tunnel level, and you take a trip thought an acrylic tunnel seemingly suspended in the Subantarctic Penguin tank, with penguins swimming over you, next to you and beneath you. You look to your right, and just a few feet away is a Leopard Seal (34). It takes you a moment to realize that, as there is between you and the penguins, an acrylic wall separates the predator from the prey. The tunnel drops you off not far from a clear window view into the Ross Seal pool. You look up towards an artificial ice shelf, and watch as a seal pulls its head down from taking a breath in a hole in the ice shelf and swims off looking for food. You then proceed to the entrance into another tunnel, this one suspended in the Crabeater Seal tank, with the members of the colony swimming above and below and all around you, seeking the krill that is the mainstay of their diet; the signs warn you that they are misnamed and eat no crabs. To your left are the shallower waters under their ice shelf, and to your right deeper waters beyond which swims another Leopard Seal, a voracious predator that eats an estimated eighty percent of the pups born to Crabeater Seals in the wild but here must settle for fish and invertebrate food, although overnight they might enjoy fresh, live duck, pinioned so they cannot fly away, the nearest these Leopard Seals will get to eating penguins.
Past the view into the other Ross Seal exhibit, you take a left hand turn and follow around a couple of corners until you have a view into the water under the ice shelf for the Weddell Seals (37), much larger seals also native to Antarctica. Back to where you came from and you can walk through a third tunnel, through the tank for the Emperor and other Antarctic Penguins, another Leopard Seal eyeing both them and you from just a few feet away, in its own pool.
You take the ramp up, back to ground level. You are curious about the Antarctic Seals, and you cross over the walkway cantilevered over the Antarctic Penguin Pool, stopping for a moment to view a tank filled with the fish and invertebrates that make up the penguins’ diet, and bear left. You go through a double set of doors and enter a much taller space. You bear right, and you follow a walkway. To your right is a pair of Ross Seals, sharing a pool of chilled salt water, an artificial ice shelf with diving/breathing holes, and a rocky haul out space, and to your left a similar but larger exhibit with a colony of Crabeater Seals, which gather in groups in the wild unlike their more solitary cousins, the Ross Seal. Suddenly, you realize why you entered through two sets of doors and why the large room is taller than for the penguins: Snowy Petrels and Arctic Terns have the free-flight run of the seal exhibits, resting and (hopefully) nesting on the simulated ice-dripping rocky cliffs that line the room. The walkway continues into a similar highly air-conditioned room, like the other seal exhibits, on the same light cycle as the Antarctic penguins, but this one is just one large seal exhibit, for the bulky Weddell Seals, sharing the exhibit with another set of Snowy Petrels and Arctic Terns, who fluff their feathers to shake off the snow falling on them and the covering over your walkway. You could keep going and go outside, but you head back towards the smaller seals, and then through another double set of doors into the Subantarctic Penguin exhibit, past another tank showing their food fish, squid and krill, to enjoy the view of many of the 120 penguins from above, while they squabble and hop, sleeping and squawk, snow falling on them all the while. The museum exhibit on their wall warns of an uncertain future, listing the vulnerable, threatened, endangered and recently extinct animals of the Antarctic Ecozone (39).
You head outside and walk around the Leopard Seal exhibits. You look down, and it is as if you were walking from ice floe to ice flow, with acrylic windows looking down into the Leopard Seals’ pools. They are naturally solitary, so the two males and two females are each housed by themselves, the larger females in the larger exhibits, and a sign assures visitors that the seals get to spend time together during the mating season, as they would in the wild. Although they are not housed in the heavily air-conditioned buildings, their pools are chilled and they have air-conditioned dens provided for the warmer months. Today, thought, the temperate winter makes them feel at home.
After circumambulating the Leopard Seal exhibits, a sign informs you that you are on Predators’ Row, with one of the Leopard Seal pools on your right, and a set of bird aviaries on your left (40-47). You take a tour of the birds that are the ecological equivalent of the raptors of the Southern Ocean and, besides fish, enjoy the eggs and chicks of other birds so must be housed on their own: a pair of the territorial Snowy Sheathbills from Antarctica; colonies of Southern Fulmars, South Polar Skuas, Antarctic/Brown Skuas, the Kelp or Dominican or Southern Black-backed Gull, and Southern and Northern Giant Petrels; and then a pair of the subantarctic Black-faced or Lesser Sheathbills. The birds all enjoy chilled salt water pools and rocky cliffs, shore and islands for roosting as well as, outside of visiting hours, live food.
Past the birds, opposite another entrance into the Subantarctic Penguin exhibit, stands the Aquarium. You enter. Like the penguins, the tanks are kept on a light and temperature cycle that matches their natural latitude. The center is a set of tanks showing the coastal and continental shelf fish and invertebrates of Antarctica itself (16-22), including fish without hemoglobin, sea anemones that live upside down anchored on an ice shelf, and a starfish with as many as fifty, yes, that’s 5-0, legs. Around the outside are another set of tanks, displaying the fish and invertebrates of the coast and shelf regions around the various sets of subantarctic islands (3-6, 8-12 & 14-15). Still another set of tanks, some large, display the pelagic and bathyal fish and invertebrates that live where the three great oceans (Pacific, Atlantic and Indian) each turn into the circumpolar Southern Ocean ((1, 7 & 13). And a set of museum exhibits inside the aquarium explain the Antarctic Convergence, the relationship between the Antarctic ice and sea level, the Ozone Hole, and what Antarctic research is revealing to us about how life survived a period in deep geologic time known as “Snowball Earth”.
You exit the Aquarium just past the exhibit on ice and sea levels, and you head around a large aviary that you realize is also a seal exhibit for Southern Elephant Seals, the largest carnivore on earth. The exhibit is as big as a football field (48), and needs to be: there are two male and a dozen female seals, the exhibit designed so that there are two areas that cannot be defended together, letting each male establish a territory. The females take their pick. And, just as a visit to the islands would let you view seals and birds together, the exhibit also houses colonies of birds that nest on South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, where the elephant seals can be found in large numbers: the South Georgia Cormorant/Shag; a subspecies of each of the Antarctic Tern and the Antarctic Prion (a type of petrel); several other Petrels (South Georgia Diving, White-chinned, Common Diving, and White-bellied and Black bellied Storm Petrels; and a small perching bird, the South Georgia Pipit.
As you walk along the exhibit, you realize that, to your left, is a football sized pool, enjoyed by a group of the uniquely colored Hourglass Dolphins (51). Both exhibits are roiled by sizeable artificial waves.
Past the Hourglass Dolphins is another large pool that is home to a group of Commerson’s Dolphin (52). One of the areas to which they are native is the waters around the Kerguelen Islands, and directly across is another seal and bird exhibit with natives of the Kerguelen and Crozet Islands (49): fourteen Antarctic Fur Seals sunning on the beach and playing in the cold rough waves; a couple of pair of Eaton’s Pintail, the southernmost nesting duck; and colonies of several sea birds: the Kerguelen Cormorant/Shag; another subspecies of each of the Antarctic Tern and Prion; the Kerguelen Tern; Salvin’s Prion; the Slender-billed or Thin-billed Prion; and four petrels: Great-winged; White-headed; Gray; and Gray-backed Storm Petrels.
You keep going, and there is still another pair of similar large exhibits. On your left is the pool for Spectacled Porpoises (53). And on your right, a seal and bird exhibit representing Macquarie Island (50), with fourteen Subantarctic Fur Seals, and seabird colonies: still more subspecies of the Antarctic Tern and Prion; the Macquarie Cormorant/Shag; the Fairy Prion; and, of course, some petrels, the White-headed, Blue and Gray-backed Storm Petrels.
If you want, you can follow the fur seal aviary around and return for another look at the Weddell Seals, but you turn left instead, along the wide, south side of the porpoise pool, and follow the signs for the monorail’s Antarctica/Cape of Good Hope station. During the stroll you marvel at the diversity and sheer volume of life on the shores of and in the Southern Ocean. What’s the next stop on your journey of enrichment—perhaps a trip to the Galapagos Islands?
I like how you limited yourself to species that can survive in captivity, instead of ones found only in captivity or going crazy.
