|
 School of Fish
Lessons Learned as The Georgia Aquarium Looks Back Over an Eventful First Year
By Jennifer Maciejewski
When Bernie Marcus donated $250 million dollars to build Atlanta’s first aquarium, he hoped the new attraction would appeal to our diverse community while providing an economic boon to downtown. So he gathered a team of experts to construct the world’s largest aquarium, home to more than 120,000 fish and the only whale sharks in North America. More than three million visitors have walked through its doors since last November, spawning millions more in economic growth and development in the metro area. It is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
But building and operating an aquarium on such a massive scale is not as easy as it seems. No matter how much planning goes into a project, experience remains the best teacher. Here, the Georgia Aquarium’s staff share some of the lessons learned since its inception.
Lesson 1: Learn From the Mistakes of Others
During the design phase, Executive Director Jeff Swanagan, Marcus and other employees toured 55 aquariums in 13 countries in three months, discovering everything from what aspects work to the “been there, done that” changes that other staffs would make if they could start over again from scratch. By cherry-picking the best features and modifying the cumbersome parts of existing aquariums, the team was able to design and build an impressive, state-of-the-art facility for Downtown Atlanta.
“It has been an amazing journey,” Swanagan noted. “The Georgia Aquarium is very different than typical aquariums. [During the tour,] we were amazed with light, especially natural sunlight and how it twinkled into the exhibits in Japan. So when you look at our Tropical Diver exhibit, featuring the 170,000-gallon living coral reef, you see how we have taken that to a new level. A lot of aquariums don’t let sunlight in. We actually embrace it and use it. We have four exhibits that use sunlight and [provide] a different experience if you are here in the morning versus at night.”
On a behind-the-scenes tour, guests at the Georgia Aquarium can see some of its hidden efficiencies firsthand. An intricate series of back hallways connect the loading dock to the exhibits, food-preparation areas and veterinary clinic, allowing employees to service the animals without crossing visitor pathways. Its operational systems contain 61 miles of pipe and wire — enough to circle Atlanta along I-285 — and 218 pumps, which work so effectively that the eight-million gallon aquarium’s water bill is roughly equivalent to that of a large grocery store.
Plus, the aquarium boasts a dedicated education loop on the second floor, complete with learning labs and a separate cafeteria and entrance, which enables school children to focus on their lessons and get a taste of the exhibits without trampling other guests.
 Lesson 2: If You Build It, They Will Come
And come in droves they did. The aquarium welcomed its three-millionth guest on Aug. 23, a staggering number given that in the last seven years, the largest attendance of any aquarium has been roughly two million visitors. While most aquariums still rely heavily on ticket-window sales, the Georgia Aquarium sells approximately 90 percent of its tickets online which, combined with its timed-ticketing system, keeps entry lines to a minimum, despite drawing record crowds and having all guests pass through a security checkpoint before entering.
In order to keep the experience fun for both first-time and returning visitors, crowd control remains one of the staff’s top priorities. Though the fire code allows the aquarium to house more than 8,000 people at one time, Swanagan tested the waters by setting the capacity at 6,000 when it opened its doors last year. However, he quickly discovered that number proved to be too many people at one time, as it was taking guests roughly six hours to see everything in the aquarium. Bit by bit he reduced the number, ultimately finding that a capacity of just shy of 4,000 people proved to be ideal. While it may seem counterintuitive, allowing fewer people in the building at one time, the result actually increased its daily attendance numbers since guests could explore the aquarium in roughly half the time.
If staff members notice things that make it difficult for guests to maneuver through the exhibits, they quickly suggest and make changes, such as introducing stroller parking at the entrance to the galleries or removing walls to handle a larger crowd flow. “We’ve actually closed down some exhibits and rebuilt them in different locations,” Swanagan explained. “We had one exhibit that was so awesome no one would leave it — our giant Pacific octopus exhibit in the Cold Water Gallery. So we closed that exhibit down and rebuilt it in a new location. You can still see the octopus, and now we don’t have that crowd problem.”
Lesson 3: Create a Home Away from Home … With Perks
When it comes to the animals’ habitats, the visitor’s viewing experience is only part of the equation. The staff’s primary focus remains on the animals that call the Georgia Aquarium home, and each exhibit’s design takes into account the inhabitant’s swimming, resting, light and nutritional needs. For instance, technicians used sound mapping to ensure that noise generated from pumps and visitors would minimize the noise level inside the tanks. If animals, such as the sea dragons or the piranhas, are particularly sensitive to light, a sign on the exhibit instructs visitors to refrain from using flash photography.
Above all, the exhibits provide ample room for the animals to live comfortably for the rest of their natural lives. If an exhibit looks small to you, don’t be fooled by appearances. “It is easy to misunderstand an exhibit space just from the public’s eye and have an idea that it may be too small or too encumbering,” explained Ray Davis, vice president of zoological operations. “We work to design exhibits so that you don’t know the edges. The acrylic doesn’t magnify the animals, but it does bring the features closer, or appear to be closer, to the guest. As an example, at Ocean Voyager’s large viewing window, there is a rock wall that you can see. The closest point of that rock wall is 90 feet away. So people are standing there and it’s hard to fathom that it’s not right there in front of you. It can give the illusion that it is smaller than it really is.”
Inside the tanks, the husbandry staff works to mirror essential aspects of each animal’s natural environment. For instance, sharks don’t sleep. Their physiological rest comes in the form of gliding, which they are able to do along the currents in Ocean Voyager. Likewise, sea otters in their native environment will use a rock as a tool to break open a sea urchin or oyster. Those living at the aquarium imitate that same behavior as they attempt to retrieve their food from the center of a plastic ball. In order to make food accessible for the bottom feeders, Chris Schreiber, assistant manager in husbandry, created a mechanism to pump their daily rations to the bottom of the tank.
Though predator and prey cohabitate in certain exhibits, it is, for the most part, a peaceful existence. During the time that the animals spend quarantined prior to being put on display, they are trained to eat using target feeding, which teaches them to come to a certain point to be fed. So long as they receive a steady diet of food (all of the animals eat restaurant-quality seafood), their hunger is satisfied, and they do not often feel the need to hunt their tankmates, though it does happen on occasion.
If an animal falls ill, there’s the Correll Center for Aquatic Animal Health, which was the first aquatic veterinary teaching hospital integrated into an aquarium. Visitors can scope out the 10,000-plus-square-foot animal health facility, which features a surgery room, examination room, a pharmacy and a water-quality lab, through viewing windows during a behind-the-scenes tour. If the animal is too big or too fragile to make the trip to the center, most of the equipment can be transported directly to the exhibit.
One of the key beneficiaries of the Correll Center is Gasper, one of two Beluga whales that the aquarium rescued from an amusement park in Mexico. “We knew it would be a big responsibility to do early on, but we also believed that we needed to do this, even if it was right around the time that we needed to open the aquarium,” Davis said. “Part of what our mission speaks to is a rescue-rehabilitation-relocation process. Gasper’s been improving. He’s been responding to behavioral management, but he’s still in critical condition because he has osteomyelitis [an infection of the bone in his tail and flipper], and we don’t know the cause. Even in humans, osteomyelitis is a disease that can be very catastrophic and can take a very long time to not only diagnose, but to treat.”
In addition, the aquarium plays a key role in the research community. Home to the only whale sharks in North America, its two males and two females (Ralph, Norton, Alice and Trixie) will provide researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to study these little-known creatures, from learning how big they can get and how long it takes them to get to that size to understanding their breeding behavior and determining when they reach sexual maturity. “With some of these things, you don’t have an opportunity [to find the answer] unless you have a chance to benchmark aspects in an aquarium setting,” Davis said.
 Lesson 4: Continue to Evolve
Like the researchers, the aquarium’s staff quickly discovered that the general public is hungry for as much information about the animals on display as possible. Though the aquarium places interpreters at the main exhibits to interact with guests, its staff soon learned that visitors want to receive the details in a variety of formats: watching, listening and reading. In response to these requests, the aquarium is adding more graphics and movies to supplement the information available through its volunteers, starting with the Cold Water Quest exhibit.
The staff remains open to suggestions that will improve each experience at the facility, even beyond the exhibits. For instance, when an annual-pass holder pointed out that it wasn’t possible to book a same-day reservation online, the program was modified to make that available. Wheelchairs are now loaned to those who need them at the parking deck instead of the information desk to make it easier to travel between the two points, and additional rain protection and shade coverings will be constructed along the walkway to give visitors a break from the weather.
Plus, the aquarium will offer additional discounts to both annual-pass holders and one-time guests beginning this fall. Members will enjoy discounted prices for everything from the gift shop and 4-D theater to the Café Aquaria and parking, as well as perks such as special events and members-only hours. For conventioneers and out-of-town guests, purchasing a $59 City Pass grants them access to six major attractions in the city, including the aquarium, and is valid for nine days.
Home to the only whale sharks in North America, its two males and two females (Ralph, Norton, Alice and Trixie) will provide researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to study these little-known creatures.
Lesson 5: There are Peak Times
If you’re like many Atlantans, you’ve probably been waiting for the crowds to lessen before you venture down to check out the big fish tank. If so, less-crowded times occur during the school year, when foot traffic through the aquarium is much lighter from Monday through Friday. Like other major attractions in the metro area, the aquarium tends to be fairly busy on weekends and holidays, with the busiest times of the day stretching from the late morning into the early afternoon. Remember that the World of Coke is scheduled to open next door in May 2007, an event that may trigger large crowds at the aquarium.
“There are a lot of people outside of 285 who have yet to rediscover downtown,” Swanagan asserted. “The trick for us is to keep the aquarium fresh, changing and dynamic so that those who have been here, as well as those who have not been here, have a reason to come and come back. For a lot of our friends who have said, ‘I am going to wait until the crowds die down,’ now is the time to come. Weekends, I still expect to be pretty crowded, and our reservation systems certainly indicate that, but if you can come in now, Monday through Friday, you are going to have an incredible experience.”
For More Information
Georgia Aquarium
225 Baker St.
Atlanta, GA 30313
404-581-4000
www.georgiaaquarium.org
|
