Loading ...First, here is some more pics from the Georgia Aquarium:
The Wall of Jellyfish
The Reef Exhibit
Thes pictures are from the Cold Water Exhibit. The creeatures your see, e.g anemones are in water temperatures of 55F.
Beluga Whales
Anyone know who this is???
That’s Bernie Marcus……the Home Depot dude that forked out a whopping 250 million dollars to build the Georgia Aquarium.
Here we go for the next installment which will be pictures frolm the “Behind the Scenes Tour”, and more about my trip in Atlanta DAY 1.
So it’s time for the 3:00pm behind the scenes tour. The tours are capped at 9 people to keep them intimate.
We first come to this massive mechanical room that operates the Reef exhibit. There is 3 massive skimmers that make the biggest one you have seen in operation a toothpick. Over 8 million gallons of water pass through the filtration systems every 30 minutes.
So what you are looking now is the top of the reef exhibit. There is roughly 60 Metal halide lights that push out 1500 watts each.
To the right of this next pic, you will see water falling down. Every 30 seconds, this massive reservoir tank is filled and spiils into the reef exhibit simulating waves and creating circulation in the tank.
Another view from top of the reef.
So we then proceed to the top of the Beluga Whale exhibit.
From here, we move onto the the top of the Ocean Voyager exhibit. This area was huge and where most people take their pictures below. There are tours here where if you want to snorkle one lap around it is $190US, or if you want to scuba dive for 30 minutes it will cost $290US. IF you want to clean the glass for free, become a volunteer. There are over 1200 volunteers that help out with varous duties in the aquarium.
Here’s some nice views of the whales from the top
This area here is where coral is propagated to place in the reef when they are ready.
This next pic is a hospital room where all the animals are taken care of. Apparantly the animals at the Georgia aquarium hava a better health care benefits than most Americans.
This is a package of Instant Ocean salt that is dumped into the aquarium every 2 weeks. No mixing here, just dumped right it.
This is the cargo container that brings in all the large animals to the aquarium. The latest one was the Manta Ray. they come equiped fully with climate control, and other gadgets to make sure the animal is not stresses too much. UPS ships the container for the low cost of nothing.
This is a computer monitor control sytem of all the equipment in the aquarium. Sort of like a super advanced Nepune system.
So that was basically the tour. From here I briefly checked out the Titanic Exhibit. Here is some pics of the rooms. The first pic was a room for the equivalent that cost back then $2400 today this would be about $42,000.
The next pic is a poor mans room
This next pic is a replica piece of iceburg with hand prints of the victims who tried to hold on. They have maintained the temperture of the berg so if you were to touch it, it would be like touching ice.
After a great time at the aquarium, I realized that the Atlanta braves were playing the Washington National’s, I scored some great seats right behind the dug-out and watched the Braves take the win.
Around 10:30pm I’m getting real tired and need my sleep for the conference to begin the next day. I head back to the hotel and start noticing that it’s getting real busy. People from all over the world, mostly the USA were checking in for MACNA XX. I also noticed that quite a few of the people checking in were quite athletic looking with lots of muscle. I thought to myself “Wow, lots of healthy reefers”. Well I soon find out that all UFC fighters are staying at the hotel, on my floor (remember I have the suite upgrade), getting ready to have a UFC showdown at the Phillips Centre Saturday night. It was insane……..people were snapping pictures left and right, trying to meet the top dogs of UFC. I really wanted to take some pics and the opportunity was not very promising. Little did I know what Day 2 had in mind. Stay tuned for Part 3!
