Melbourne Zoo Wild Sea....

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phoenix

Well-Known Member
well today marked the opening of melbourne's new marine precinct.

and judging from the zoos website there already seems to be some confusion as to whether the new penguin pool is over 3 meters deep or over 2 meters deep!

but on a more serious note, i was very pleased to read that the new seal pool is fitted with a wave machine. this is something i have always wanted in a seal pool and i think it will be a very valuable addition as an enrichment device for the animals. this was promising information. i have been quite anxious to find out if this new exhibit will meet my expectations.

sadly it doesn't.

someone has already posted images on flickr and whilst i will definitely go see the exhibit in person, based on those two images alone i'm already prepared to writing this one off.

[ame="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aviationphotos/4165010481/sizes/l/in/photostream/"]Flickr Photo Download: New Wild Sea - Enclosure (Melbourne Zoo)[/ame]

THAT IS HIDEOUS!! it makes the old pool look like a classic work of art.
there is absolutely no reason why those rocks should not be designed to look real. how is purposefully "artificialising" natural landscapes supposed to make a visitor appreciate them? what is the aim behind this? what was the designer(s) trying to achieve here?

and the penguins are no better...

[ame="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aviationphotos/4165772214/sizes/l/in/photostream/"]Flickr Photo Download: New Wild Sea - Enclosure (Melbourne Zoo)[/ame]

[ame="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aviationphotos/4165770482/sizes/l/in/photostream/"]Flickr Photo Download: New Wild Sea - Enclosure (Melbourne Zoo)[/ame]

mesh grills. teal rubber mats. concrete ledges. coloured rods?!!! even the penguins have stupidly coloured armbands on.

taronga won. by a long, long mile.

$20 million on outdated architecture and pissweak attempt as groundbreaking design. haven't seen the exhibit yet. but i know i'll despise it.

not a day old and it already needs a renovation.
 
Mmmm didn't think much of the rocks in the seal pool. Did like the waves though. Penguin pool seemed to be function over design. Is there any sand or dirt substrate at all? And I didn't like the coloured plastic wall at the back of the two exhibits.
Will be very interested to hear what you have to say after you've seen it Phoenix. And what everyone has to say.
 
Wow, some harsh comments here. Let's take a look at the positives, because clearly there are many. If you are familiar with the old seal pool (which was originally built to house monkeys, was not deep enough and had leakage issues, making it tough on the keepers to keep the ph levels right), then you WILL appreciate this new exhibit. I have seen it and I loved it. The seals apparently do too, judging by their behaviour, especially when the wave-maker is ramped up so the water is crashing off the rocks (and I'm not going anywhere near the real vs fake rock argument). The pool is in fact 5 metres deep. There are 2 fantastic underwater viewing windows for the seals, plus one for the penguins as well. Do you remember where the penguins were previously?? The size of the pond they had to swim in? Well clearly this new enclosure is a major improvement. Phew, just had to say my bit :)
 
zoogal, if you think this is a question of whether or not the exhibit will be better for the animals, then you've missed the point.

i have no doubt its functional. so it should be. but its failed miserably on the aesthetic department.
 
I question the amount of money that is spent on these grand new exhibits. I know building is not cheap but private zoos eg Mogo need to work on a constrained budget and so a design where it is all function and no asthetics is what you would expect from them. They don't have the moneyt to spend on realistic rock etc. I personally expect more from govt. funded zoos where they spneds millions.
I won't make any further judgements until I actually see it, maybe in January.
 
zoos vic has proven on countless occasions that they are capable of award-winning naturalistic exhibits.

in fact they were one of the first zoos in the world to embrace the immersion concept.

interestingly i think their first attempt - the african rainforest is among their best ever. it struck the right balance between naturalistic landscaping and undisguised, yet understated man-made elements. neither element dominated over the other.

i think zoos that try to disguise every single object as natural come across as tacky and faux. you certainly can overdo the mock rock and concrete trees, but at the same time, obvious man made elements removes the visitor and animals completely from the illusion of a natural habitat. and that is not a good thing.

for a zoo that has so much experience in naturalistic landscaping, i can only come the conclusion that this design was purposeful. its trying to be different and in doing so forgot that the aim was to make an exhibit based on the natural world.
 
phoenix said:
zoos vic has proven on countless occasions that they are capable of award-winning naturalistic exhibits.

in fact they were one of the first zoos in the world to embrace the immersion concept.

interestingly i think their first attempt - the african rainforest is among their best ever. it struck the right balance between naturalistic landscaping and undisguised, yet understated man-made elements. neither element dominated over the other.

i think zoos that try to disguise every single object as natural come across as tacky and faux. you certainly can overdo the mock rock and concrete trees, but at the same time, obvious man made elements removes the visitor and animals completely from the illusion of a natural habitat. and that is not a good thing.


for a zoo that has so much experience in naturalistic landscaping, i can only come the conclusion that this design was purposeful. its trying to be different and in doing so forgot that the aim was to make an exhibit based on the natural world.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more.

The administration and staff responsible for the excellent African exhibits of the early 90s are for the most part long gone, and the revolving door that has followed (largely the result of a too-powerful board) have clearly abandoned the principles and philosophy that made those exhibits so successful from both aesthetic and animal management perspectives. I think the platypus exhibit at Healesville a few years back showed the "new direction:" being "different" simply to be different.

To my eyes, this is just a reversion to the "stylized naturalistic" style of exhibits that cropped up all over the US in the 1950s and 60s, the copies of copies of Hagenbeck where "rocks" were represented by fractal shards of concrete etc.
 
reduakari said:
To my eyes, this is just a reversion to the "stylized naturalistic" style of exhibits that cropped up all over the US in the 1950s and 60s, the copies of copies of Hagenbeck where "rocks" were represented by fractal shards of concrete etc.
Click to expand...

HA! i thought exactly the same thing.

and its worth noting that, 20 years after the gorilla exhibit was completed at melbourne - it in no ways looks even remotely dated. because it was based on being as natural as possible, it will never become outdated in style. instead as the trees grow, it only ever gets better.
 
Are the architects who design these the sort who are totally captured by 'modernism'?
 
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phoenix said:
and its worth noting that, 20 years after the gorilla exhibit was completed at melbourne - it in no ways looks even remotely dated. because it was based on being as natural as possible, it will never become outdated in style. instead as the trees grow, it only ever gets better.
Click to expand...

An interesting debate point in itself. I've been in the presence of an overseas "notable" who roundly criticised the Melbourne Zoo gorilla enclosure on the basis that it was very pretty, but there was nothing for the gorillas to do. He pointed out they wern't even allowed to climb the trees.

Overall I'm with Zoogal on this one, animal welfare comes first.
 
I had the privilege of being the first through the gate and into the Wild Sea precinct yesterday. Photos will be up in the near-ish future. Need help from my girlfriend as I'm completely inept with technology.

I'm going to steer a middle course, as I think there are some good and some disappointing elements of the development.
The good:
- Seal pool. No, it doesn't make an effort to look realistic, and I will address that later. But the pool is excellent for the inhabitants. The surge machine creates a genuine surf-like effect that is, according to keepers, prompting all sorts of new behaviours from the seals. The depth of 5m is excellent. The seals have their choice of rocky or sandy areas to sit and sunbake. The concrete formation creates a number of obstacles for them to swim around, but not so much that it reduces their swimming space meaningfully. All in all, a great improvement over what they had three years ago.
- Penguin pool. Again, a huge improvement for the penguins. They have so much space to swim! Twice as much, if not more, than the more numerous and larger kings and gentoos at Melbourne Aquarium. Again, keepers have noticed immediate changes in behaviour - the penguins are spending much less time hidden away in burrows and much more in the water. Good for the penguins, good for visitors. A win.
- The fiddler ray pool perhaps has the most potential as an exhibit of the lot. With a Port Jackson shark and three fiddlers on day one, it was very lightly loaded. There are plans for more fiddlers, a school of King George Whiting and possibly other species. Wobbegong would be great, and with about 50,000 litres in the system it's certainly possible. The pool is large, outside in the sun (which I always enjoy with a marine exhibit, if only because I don't see it often) and adds an entire class of vertebrates to the Zoo.

The bad:
- Some of the interps are, predictably, a little tacky and too plastic for my liking.
- The audio tracks. These have great potential, if tweaked a little. Whale song is played at the Main Drive entrance to the exhibit and inside in 'the deep'. Great idea, but too loud! The pitch could potentially hurt young ears, and outside it imposes too much, I feel, on other ambient zoo sounds. I heard a couple of people mistake the whale song recording for a lion roaring. As this is one sound that *is* often heard in that part of the Zoo and which could be drowned out by the whale song... I think that's unfortunate.
- The small indoor fish tanks. Slightly disappointing. There are five tanks, all of them very narrow. Ironically the fish with the most swimming space are the pot-bellied seahorses, who need it least of all. The blue devil and porcupine fish are going to feel really crowded as they grow up. One thing I don't understand is why a little more money wasn't spent to connect four of the tanks into one large one that would have provided a more interesting display and more space for the fish. Also, a lot of the fake plants in the tanks look awful.
- The huge, four-section screen in 'the deep' that shows a series of animations of various sea animals, from blue whales to dolphins, sharks and seals. Not 'bad' per se - just not really necessary. A bit distracting from the focus of the exhibit, which should be the animals. A lot of money for not much gain.

The ugly:
- The concrete within the penguin pool. Ok, they haven't tried to make the 'rockwork' look like anything other than what it is. Probably someone at Zoos Victoria has seen too many attempts at mock rock come off looking tacky and cheap. It's a common problem. I actually don't mind what they've done with the seals - the rock-work is abstract, but what it represents is easily understood and it doesn't question the intelligence of the visitor. People know they're in a zoo, and spending lots of money on making concrete look like rock won't change that. *However*. The penguin pool contains three apertures in the concrete that provide a link between the upper section of the pool, visible from outside, and the deeper portion visible from below. These apertures are all sharp-edged rectangular windows in the concrete. It looks unfinished, and distracts from the viewing below.
 
Good review CGSwans.

:p

Hix
 
I visited the Melbourne Zoo today and found the precinct to be very much "hit and miss"; but overall, it is a quality precinct with the potential to be expanded in the future (IMO...more on that another time).

Visitors enter the precinct along a path winding through naturalistic looking sand dunes, before coming to the estuary. The estuary is a great concept promoting the protection of these eco-systems but certainly not large enough for all the pelicans and cormorets to relocate to; thus only 2 pelicans were on display. Visitors then continue along the path through the dunes, passing a band of wooden beams pointless winding around the main building, before arriving at a paved open area. On one side is the outdoor fiddler ray pool (which just had 3 rays and no sharks exhibited when I was there) which I didn't find that stimulating; it seemed more suitable to be an extensive touch pool area. On another side is a small open room which I couldn't work out the need for (had a screen and empty tank) and on the final side, the entrance to "the deep". Patrons are lead along a darkened path with phony sponge displays before entering the magnificent hall of "the deep". The viewing area for the seals and penguins are extensive and the depth for both pools is quite impressive. I actually liked the series of TV screens showing marine life but had problems with the void of the lower floor; which is too big, too dark and too empty. There is easily enough room there to build an indoor ray or rockpools exhibit. I like the idea of having several small tanks dotting the exiting path, but unfortunately they all seemed pretty much empty. Visitors then exit the building and find themselves over looking the seal enclosure. Viewing is fantasitc, with an amphitheatre area and the fence being curved horizontally to allow for maximum, uninterupted viewing. The actual exhibit is good and I don't find the concrete rocks disheartening as others have. What i am disappointed is that the total surface area of the exhibit is probably smaller then the old one. Also, the seals are not given enough access to a sand/vegetation area; the only trace of this lines the border and exists under the horizontal fence. Visitors continue onto the final feature of the precinct, the penguin exhibit. I think this is one of the best exhibits in the whole zoo. Extremely large pool for penguins - probably 60-70% in TSA of the seal pool, deep pool at 3m, and large sand/vegetation area for them to burrow. The latter area is probably twice the size of their old exhibit alone.

A good addition to the zoo, but plenty of scope to expand.
 
What is with those large cement blocks in the seal pool? Holy smokes those are ugly, and they make the exhibit seem as if it is from the 1930's.;)
 
I finally got to see the new marine precinct today and I can't seem to make up my mind as to whether I like it or not. From the animals point of view it seems amazing and way better then what both species previously had and from the visitors point of view you can get great views but it isn't as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped.

As you enter there is a penguin exhibit with signs highlighting an estuary habitat and I would say this is probably my favorite exhibit in the complex. For the pelicans it's a great home (and certainly better the tarongas pelican exhibit but lets not go there. :))
Following this is a sand dune interpretation area with a pier sculpture and the old seal statues that generations of Melbournians have had their photos with. This area was another good area because it was natural and had signs pointing out endangered species found among Victorias sand dunes habitats.
Then came the ray pool which I liked and there was a volunteer there all day supervising. I like it because it's something a bit different for visitors but this is where the ugly plain rocks start and they continue the rest of the way through the exhibits.
Then you decend into the building for underwater views of the seals and penguins and this is another highlight. The 3 floor to ceiling glass underwater viewing windows were simply amazing and quite capable of accomodating the large crowds that were there that day. I also really liked the projections on the walls of whales and dolphins swimming around and the sculptures were pretty cool and kids seemed to like them. The penguin underwater viewing was really good as well but less effective as the seals and caused a bit of a traffic jam because it's on the exit ramp and isn't very wide. When the tanks along the exit ramp are stocked I think this precinct could compete with Melbourne Aquarium.
As you exit the building there are two small pools that have gates which I assume are for public encounters and they seemed ok. Then you come out to view the seals above water and this area has some things I liked and others that I absolutley hated. For starters the public viewing area is definatly big anough to not get crowded and there is lots of seating which I assume is for the shows they'll hold (there isn't one yet). The seals also have access to sand areas and I don't know why but I can't think of any seal exhibits I've seen with this feature. And here you can see the effects of the wave machine which is my favorite feature of the whole area and it looked like the seals were having a great time splashing around in the waves. But what I hated in this exhibit was the flat-topped, smooth cement rockwork...it was just plain hideous and reminded me of the old exhibit.
Then some interpretation about eating seafood before coming to the penguins above water vieing area and I was really suprised because it was less ugly then I expected from photos I've seen and I think I can safely say it is about 3 times bigger then their old home and they were really making the most of their huge pool on both times I walked past.
And that just about wraps it up. :)
 
can anyone tell me if the fiddler ray pool is a touch pool because every time someone went near the water with their hands the volunteer went off at them. one woman replied to the volunteer, "if you don't want visitors touching the exhibits then why did you build them like this". i agreed with her. zoos vic should know how stupid and disrespectful some of the public can be. i would like to see a barrier put in place, mainly around the penguin pool.

i think everyone here appreciated the wave machine, (my fav feature).
 
I am actually really happy for the penguins. Their behaviour has changed significantly in this new enclosure. They are vocalising much more and look to be loving the extra amount of water they've be allocated.

I am concerned about the Australasian Gannett though. His name is Bass and had lived with the penguins for a long time in the old penguin enclosure. Bass is now been put in with two pelicans at the entry to wild sea and doesn't look happy. Everytime he hears the penguins his little head looks around longingly. I really hope they decide to put him back with the penguins, but I don't think they will due to the enclosure not being suitable for an Australasian Gannett.
 
he has been with those penguins a long time. since he cant fly, why is the new penguin enclosure not suitable?
 
I'd like to see him put into the penguin exhibit too. In the old exhibit he used to dive for food so imagine how cool it would be to see him diving from underwater.

And I also forgot to add that there is a little pied comorant in the penguin exhibit that was born in the GFA and had lived in the old penguin enclosure for a short while.
 
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