I dropped in for a visit yesterday and had the place mostly to myself. The Sharks! building itself is the visual highlight of the campus, making everything else, comparatively, a bit tired. Of course, there is still construction with barriers of all kinds nearly everywhere. The 4D theatre looks like the tent structure it really is. And the new Playcuarium and Spineless Wonders exhibits will still be in their original building, which were built soon after the Aquarium moved from from Castle Clinton at Manhattan's tip in 1957. Fun facts for history buffs:. Robert Moses, longtime power broker of parks and buildings and highways, had always hated the Coney Island amusement area (which used to span 35 blocks) and as retribution for someone expressing disapproval at building the Battery Tunnel to Brooklyn, he unexpectedly declared the Castle Clinton building unsafe and banished the aquarium to its site in Coney Island, which was then a popular and heavily-used public bath house. Without any facilities in their new location, the collection had to live at the Bronx Zoo for two years. It really was a banishment; I daresay attendance was higher then than it might be now.
In any case, most of the Zoo's original buildings are still in use, and the incredible new building really makes it apparent. Coney Island history buffs, myself included, lament the vast reduction in size of the original amusement district. There were once 7 rollercoasters on Coney Island! The Keyspan field and the AAA baseball team combined with the Abe Stark skating rink has now left the west end of amusements at about 18th Street, and Aquarium is it's east-end border. It's interesting to note that the Aquarium has been increasing in area over the years, with the Ocean Wonders building pushing to the east. The western border was always 8th Street, but the quiet purchase of a boardwalk building aboht 7 years ago made an education building a presence on the boardwalk past 8th St.. I thought it would just be isolated from the rest of the aquarium, but yesterday, I noticed a whole raft of trucking containers filling the whole property, both to 8th St. and all the way to Surf Avenue. I think it's possible that this might just be paving the way for what would be a sizeable increase in space. Perhaps it would become the new parking lot and free up the current one for exhibit space.
Thisl also may be part of the Sharks exhibit that has mystified me. The Zoo showed the final move of the sharks themselves from some mystery location to thet very top of the new building by moving them quite a long distance, one by one, by forklift under the boardwalk. I can't imagine where there could be a space big enough to house the 8 or 9 sharks they moved that day. And it wasn't as if they were newly arrived--keepers were talking to and about them using the sharks' names. They clearly already had a strong relationship. Where could they have been along the boardwalk? Behind the education building?
One area under construction is the underwater viewing of Sea Cliffs, whose current residents east to west are about 30 black-footed penguins (most of which are off exhibit), 2 sea otters sharing 2 exhibits, 2 harbor seals, and then 3 sea lions. (Five more live in the performance grandstand). There was construction going on there too, thereby cancelling the sea lion show.
I learned something about the current SSP strategy for sea otters. The Zoo's two are males, Jacob and Quint are clearly not part of a breeding plan, and with their status as endangered, why their wouldn't be more breeding efforts around the country? The answer was that there are so many sea otters being rescued that current zoo facilities are needed to house animals that can not return to the wild. Apparently, despite their endangered status, there is no SSP breeding anywhere. This would be consistent with Jacob missing an eye and Georgia Aquarium's adoptions of two young sea otters from Monterey. However, it vexes me somewhat. Why can't both rescue and breeding occur in zoos? Surely many zoos could accommodate small aquatic animals and increase their numbers in human care as a backup population? I'm sure sea otters could become the new sloths in popularity and both represent their plight and breed to increase the population.
The Sharks! exhibits are really beautiful. There was even a huge loggerhead sea turtle I didn't expect who was actively stealing the show! The way that fish come toward you out of the blackness is just amazing, and then seeing them swim overtop in the tunnel exhibit really makes you feel like a silent observer plopped in the middle of their world. It just gets better with subsequent visits.
