Taronga Zoo Great Southern Oceans

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G.s.o

the barrier across from the gorillas has been removed and the top section of G.S.O can be seen. it is looking good. The seal theatre is pretty impressive. From what I could see it is going to be great. They are redeveloping the old Moore Park avairy. And the entrance to the old aquarium has been cleaned up and painted. Can't wait for it to open.:)
 
glyn said:
hey boof, how close to being finished does it look?
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The theatre for the seal shows looks complete apart from the sail over the area for shade. The gardens under the cliff between the gorillas and zoo shop look finished. The section down near the old seal ponds looks like the area that is being worked on at the moment, but I didn't go down that part of the zoo. Moore Park avairy has been stripped right back to just the old fake rock work. the aquarium entry looks finished. Like I said it is looking good. I can't wait for it to open. all the pools that can be seen from the top viewing area are full and look impressive. The seal theatre pool is the same style as Singapore's animal show pool.
 
have thery raised up the humpback whales, when i was there there was 2 ready to be hung from the shop, they were massive, and a nice marker to the entry of gso
 
Zoo_Boy said:
have thery raised up the humpback whales, when i was there there was 2 ready to be hung from the shop, they were massive, and a nice marker to the entry of gso
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yes, the hump backs are up
 
Zoo_Boy said:
did you get pics?
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Got a few, but they aren't that good. I not going to put them in the gallery. I don't want to do the exhibit an injustice by loading my **** house photos.
It's Tarongas exhibit, they can put their own photos on their web site when they are ready.
 
seen the website for this exhibit looks amazing and with the rest of taronga what a setting but i would love to have seen southern elephant seals back at the zoo, i remember seeing somewhere maybe 20 years ago they imported 3 from the wild i guess they weren't very successful with them, which is a shame as they are the most spectacular animals.
 
one thing i was wodnering, is wht the seal thetre didnt have a more orientation towards sydney harbour. i thought that performing seals would be kool with the opera house and brindge in background.

but there still is a lot of harbour viewing from other areas of the development
 
i think it has something to do with the angle the theater would have to be at to get the best veiw. and there is a couple of heritige listed structres in the area that had to work around. so maybe the theater would ave had to replace one of those to get the best veiw of the bridge ect
 
looking forward to that. Does anyone know if the fiordland penguins eggs were fertile?
 
ok who's jealous??? i just walked though GSO at the foundation's fundraising dinner.

there were only two fur seals in there atm. but the pools are beautiful. Their deep and have multilayered bottoms with fake 'coral' sort of features on the ground so they look intersting and not just like pools. The underwater veiwing for the seals is good and the new seal theater looks really cool. the peniguin pool are awosme and are on a teired level so the water flows down this little beach thing and then there is an underwater viewing tunnel.

the only negitive thing i will say about it is that it only has two seal pools, altohgh the sea leopard pool holds over 1000,000 mega litres of water in it, and a hell of a lot landscaping and gardens that dont really fit in with the rest of the exhibit. it all looks good but its a bit like B2B in that there is more interpretaition stuff and bits that 'look good' and less of the actual animals.
 
two seal pools only? doesn't taronga have four or more species of seal? will some sealion or fur seal species share pools? (i don't imagine anyone wants to share with the leopard seals!) will the old pools continue to be used? will the californian sea lions be kept off display and used only for shows?

wonder whats the deal there?

also, has anyone got an update on the health of the "new" leopard seals. i'm assuming they have so far survived...
 
patrick said:
two seal pools only? doesn't taronga have four or more species of seal? will some sealion or fur seal species share pools? (i don't imagine anyone wants to share with the leopard seals!) will the old pools continue to be used? will the californian sea lions be kept off display and used only for shows?

wonder whats the deal there?

also, has anyone got an update on the health of the "new" leopard seals. i'm assuming they have so far survived...
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the two new leopard seals are doing really really well. they now have names and traning has started. the male is Casey and the female, Sabine. the names are from beaches or research stations in Antartica. the keepers say that all tree of them have started to sing to each other so they can hear but not see each other.

I though two pools was odd as well. the californian sea lions will probably still only come out for the shows and i guess they will just rotate the sea lions and fur seals around between the main pool. they have started matching up aus fur seals so i think that there will probably always be at least two seals in the exhibit.

the old pools will no longer hold seals and becuase they are heratage listed theres not much they can do to adapt them to fit other animals the last i heard they were going to do one of two things , fill them with dirt and make a nice garden or put something like crocs in there but nobody knows yet so dont quote me on that.
 
sorry torie, i belive there is 2 pools on the new addition, plus one of the old ones is still actually there, the original underwater viewing in the bottom entrence is still there, and is being refurbished to hold a third species. the leoprad seal pool can be divided into 2, and will look likely so as taronga now has more leopard seals. i also belive there is extensive off exhibit holding for seals in the show.
 
Zoo_Boy said:
sorry torie, i belive there is 2 pools on the new addition, plus one of the old ones is still actually there, the original underwater viewing in the bottom entrence is still there, and is being refurbished to hold a third species. the leoprad seal pool can be divided into 2, and will look likely so as taronga now has more leopard seals. i also belive there is extensive off exhibit holding for seals in the show.
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yer the off exhibit area is massive and part of it is under the seats in the seal show area. i think they can divide the lepard pool but it will still only have leopard seals in it they are just going to split up the boy and the girl. if there is a third pool and there may be becasue some of the exhibit we didnt walk down into but if it is there it is out of the way and not immediatly obvious when walking around at through it.
 
its the roginal underwater, and to get technical, it,s not really part of GSO, it's part of the entrance (bottom) and carnt be seen from GSO, or any great amount of it.
 
one thing i found really funy was that they have done up the old heratage aviry that its down that way on the side of the stairs leading down towords the crocs and running allong side GSO (wost desription of a location ever!) but they obviously couldnt decide what to put in there or the birds arnt ready for some reason (anyone know if anything is going in there or if its just for show?) and because it looks boring empty they caught up two of the free ranngeing peacoks and stuck them in their for the night. the zoo has alsobrought in new male peackocks and some females so it was a little over kill on the peackocks but what they hey, they look pretty
 
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