ZooChat Cup S3: Aquarium Cup

ZooBinh

ZooBinh

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
5+ year member
As Season 1 and the original game was presented by @CGSwans , and Season 2 by @pachyderm pro , I present to you ZooChat Cup S3: Aquarium Cup. The contestants of this season are 24 amazing aquariums from around the world.
Georgia Aquarium
Monterey Bay Aquarim
Shedd Aquarium
Dallas World Aquarium
National Aquarium Baltimore
Alaska SEA LIFE Centre
Tennessee Aquarium
Vancouver Aquarium
AquaRio
Sao Paulo Aquarium
uShaka Marine World
Two Oceans Aquarium
Aquarium of Western Australia
SEA LIFE Centre Sydney
Waikiki Aquarium
National Marine Aquarium Plymouth
Aquarium of Genoa
TurkuaZoo Aquarium
Oceanografic Valencia
Miyajima Public Aquarium
Shanghai Ocean Aquarium
S.E.A Aquarium
Okinawa Churami Aquarium
SEA LIFE Centre Busan
How it's gonna go
Two aquariums will face each other, then the winner will face the next aquarium, the loser of that matchup will then face the first loser, and the winning loser will face the winner of the first two matches. So all aquariums will start off in 8 groups of 3, and each group will have 4 starting matches. All you have to do is vote, and if you want to explain, you are more than welcome to. May the best aquarium win!
The Categories
For this season, there are 8 categories
Freshwater Fish
Coral Reef Species
Sharks and Rays
Saltwater Fish
Seabirds
Marine Mammals
Herps and Inverts
Miscellaneous Species
The first poll will be my next thread. Thank you for taking part in this!
 
Why does Miyajima makes it on the list? And why don't seaworld count? Also, i think toba and osaka should make in the list. Busan and Rio makes it but not Taiwan?
 
Does “coral reef species” include the coral as well as fish and invertebrates, or just some of that assortment?
 
aardvark250 said:
Why does Miyajima makes it on the list? And why don't seaworld count? Also, i think toba and osaka should make in the list. Busan and Rio makes it but not Taiwan?
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I didn't know Taiwan had an aquarium, I chose some of the lesser known but good quality aquariums to make it more interesing, and also Miyajima and Busan have finless porpoises, and to me that's pretty cool. I'm not an expert with aquariums out of America, so I tried my best with this.
jayjds2 said:
Does “coral reef species” include the coral as well as fish and invertebrates, or just some of that assortment?
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Yes, it is the corals, as well as the fish and invertebrates.
 
aardvark250 said:
And why don't seaworld count?
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I believe Seaworld was excluded due to cetaceans, since there are many excellent aquariums that do not hold cetaceans. (I am referring to something I saw in discussion about the cup in another thread, although I don't remember which.) If I am wrong in this I expect @ZooBinh can provide the answer.

I am interested in how the DWA will hold up, I feel if it gets the right categories it will hold its own, but will go down easy if it gets unlucky. (I believe the best thing to a marine mammal they have is manatees.) Miscellaneous species getting drawn could be interesting if it means all the land animals, forest birds, etc.
 
@Great Argus is correct, I excluded SeaWorld due to their gigantic number of cetaceans. It can easily outrule better places in my opinion just because of that.
 
So we're already disqualifying certain collections right off the bat due to them having a strong collection in one category yet including others because they have a particular species you like...?

Also, no Aquarium of the Pacific, Mystic Aquarium, or New York Aquarium? Why?

~Thylo
 
The categories are crafted in a way that only a few aquariums on the list can actually compete. Instead of having seabirds as its own category (basically just puffins and penguins at most places), why not have it lumped with pinnipeds in a more birds/mammals category that evens the playing field. Also miscellaneous species includes what?? Also how does one decipher coral reef species and saltwater speciea? As many species spend time in coral reefs, yet not all their time their.

Also excluding seaworld due to cetacean is inserting a bias into this game. Georgia Aquarium has beluga and dolphin, yet they are still here.
 
It is your thread, but I am surprised the Istanbul and Genova aquariums are on the list but not Den Bla Planet, Oceanario Lisbon and Nausicaa, which are all very possibly much better aquaria.
 
Just my opinion and suggestions on all this

First for the categories, I would at least consider having only three categories. Fresh water fish, salt water fish, and other (which would be mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians)

And then, there's been a lot of suggestions for other aquariums to be added, so why not bumping the Aquarium number from 24 to 32, so it can be like the American ZooChat cup that just finished, and easily go from 32 to 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Looking forward to participating @ZooBinh :)
 
Some changes to the list, Toba will replace Miyajima, Taiwan will replace Busan, uShaka by SeaWorld San Diego, SEA LIFE Alaska by Den Bla Planet.
 
Explaining the categories
Freshwater Species (including freshwater inverts)
Coral Reef Species (fish normally in a reef display, including corals and inverts)
Sharks and Rays
Saltwater Fish (more open sea species, pelagic fish)
Seabirds (penguins, puffins, and other shorebirds)
Marine Mammals (polar bears, otters, manatees, cetaceans, and pinnipeds)
Herps (reptiles including sea turtles, amphibians and unaquatic inverts)
Misc. Species (other species in aquariums, like flamingoes, and unaquatic species)
Hope that helps!
How it works (again)
24 aquariums are in 8 groups of three, 2 of three in a group will go against each other, the winner will then face the third aquarium, and the loser of that match will face the loser of the first match, and the winner of the third match will face the winner of the second, eventually reducing the number number of aquariums to 8, 4, then third place playoff, 2, and the winner. Hope this helps everything.
 
ZooBinh said:
24 aquariums are in 8 groups of three, 2 of three in a group will go against each other, the winner will then face the third aquarium, and the loser of that match will face the loser of the first match, and the winner of the third match will face the winner of the second, eventually reducing the number number of aquariums to 8, 4, then third place playoff, 2, and the winner. Hope this helps everything.
Click to expand...

I think this is something that should also be reconsidered. The first problem with this format is that the aquarium that starts in the second match (let's call it C), has a large advantage over the first two (A and B), because they need to win three matches to progress whereas C only needs to win two.

The best way to handle this is to seed the 24 aquariums and put the top 8 into the C slots. However this introduces another problem: let's assume that B is a better aquarium than A. In the first match B beats A and progresses. The second match is B vs C and as the best in the group C wins comfortably. So now B moves into the losers match where it faces A again. It wins and moves into the group final where it matches up against C and loses. C qualifies out of the group.

The four matches will have thus been these:
AB
BC
AB
BC

Now clearly, because we are using different categories in each match, sometimes rematches will go in a different way, and of course the better aquarium will lose because of weaknesses sometimes. But the above example is still the most likely outcome. It seems pretty clear that the system has been designed for participation sport; weaker teams get a good run around and stronger teams should get an easy run to the latter stages, but if they stumble they don't crash out.

As a spectacle though, the above is not very appealing, and the ZooCups are essentially spectator sports. There's a reason why the World Cup doesn't use this format. I suggest, and it is only a suggestion, that either the format is simplified to a knockout format where the seeded aquariums get a bye in the first round, or, as a more crowd pleasing option, simply add 8 more aquariums and have a 32 aquarium knockout.

ThylacineAlive said:
I would like to repeat my question again, but this time adding Oceanario Lisbon, as these seem like pretty big players to be excluding from the game with no given reason.

~Thylo
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They are excluded because with 24 spots there will always be some tough choices. Presumably also at 32 or even 64.
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Also, no Aquarium of the Pacific, Mystic Aquarium, or New York Aquarium? Why?

~Thylo
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I was wondering the same about Seattle...

nczoofan said:
The categories are crafted in a way that only a few aquariums on the list can actually compete. Instead of having seabirds as its own category (basically just puffins and penguins at most places), why not have it lumped with pinnipeds in a more birds/mammals category that evens the playing field. Also miscellaneous species includes what?? Also how does one decipher coral reef species and saltwater speciea? As many species spend time in coral reefs, yet not all their time their.

Also excluding seaworld due to cetacean is inserting a bias into this game. Georgia Aquarium has beluga and dolphin, yet they are still here.
Click to expand...

Seabirds could stand alone as its own category, several places have enough. MBA houses a variety of shorebirds, puffins, murres, guillemots, two albatrosses and a booby, plus the colony of African Penguins. Several other aquariums house a fair number of seabirds.
Combining seabirds and pinnipeds could be interesting. Some facilities have a lot of one and few of the other.

ZooBinh said:
Explaining the categories
Freshwater Species (including freshwater inverts)
Coral Reef Species (fish normally in a reef display, including corals and inverts)
Sharks and Rays
Saltwater Fish (more open sea species, pelagic fish)
Seabirds (penguins, puffins, and other shorebirds)
Marine Mammals (polar bears, otters, manatees, cetaceans, and pinnipeds)
Herps (reptiles including sea turtles, amphibians and unaquatic inverts)
Misc. Species (other species in aquariums, like flamingoes, and unaquatic species)
Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

Two things here: One, no category for cephalopods, mollusks, crustaceans? In many cases these don't really fall under coral reef species... They're a pretty major part of aquariums...

The other is I'm not sure how well these categories will work... For example, MBA has essentially no freshwater animals, and the only marine mammal they hold is Sea Otter... Herps is kind of a weak category over all... in several cases the battle could be over a sea turtle or two. Misc. species is an easy win for the DWA, if it gets that lucky. The variety and specializations could make things tough for good competition.
Seaworld San Diego could be a tough competitor in many of the categories... A marine mammals category would be tough to beat them in... If seabirds and marine mammals were combined even harder. I feel in many cases the argument against Seaworld will be exhibits.
 
Cephalods, mollusks and crustaceans fall under the herps and inverts category.
 
Coral reef species was changed into tropical saltwater species.
 
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