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Blacktip Sharks and a Sea Turtle Get New Home | National Geographic


for this particular exhibit it’s one of
the first exhibits visitors will arrive
at the cram so we really wanted to start
on a really kind of a WoW and the
indo-pacific reef is one of the most
biodiverse habitats in the ocean and
most people when they go to the beach on
their summer vacation they look out
you really don’t know exactly all the
habitats that are out there all the fish
that are migrating up and down the coast
we want to expose people to this
underwater world one thing we do is we
really look at the really detailed
assemblage of the reef there’s coral
that would grow be growing closer to the
surface and certain clusters we have at
least a hundred species of coral
represented in the exhibit we’ve done a
pretty good job of taking photographs of
the real thing and recreating it so the
process of making this habitat we do a
clay model we then have to start
building the full-scale so we have to
build all these ridges of coral off-site
and all these panels are actually made
of first of all fiberglass molded over a
styrofoam that’s been sculpted into the
shape so piece by piece gets lowered
into the tank assembled and then we have
to have all the seams connected in the
tank so it’s a quite a process you find
that if we make it exactly like the real
habitat the fish basically live just
like they would in the real habitat to
them its physical structure it’s the
shape they relate to it the thing that’s
unique about this exhibit is that we’ll
have 20 black tip reef sharks they’re a
shark that’s social they form social
bonds it does get a little frenzied when
the sharks are feeding so we have to
sort of break them up so we actually do
target training for the Sharks that sort
of get them
what feeding time is sort of the
equipment of 20 dogs that are gonna be
fed at the same time you would not want
to have just one dog bowl you want to
have four separate stations for feeding
Calypso is a green sea turtle now clip
so was an animal that was actually a
rescue animal for us she had some
netting around one of her front flippers
which cut off the blood flow so
unfortunately she had an infection in a
flipper once we removed that marine
debris we unfortunately had to amputate
one of her front flippers she was an
animal that really couldn’t be released
but she really is an animal that them
the visitors when they see her come up
for a breath right in front of them
really are amazed at her just size and
beauty so it’s it’s just like that
opportunity if you were able to travel
to one of these habitats the biggest joy
I get out of it is seeing kids and
families they’re just like holy cow look
at this
you
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