America's Largest Aquarium (Georgia Aquarium)Read before visiting
The largest aquarium in the world and comes face to face with its largest inhabitant the whale shark hi i'm jonathan bird and welcome to my world the whale shark is the largest fish in the sea and it would take an enormous aquarium to hold a whale shark i'm here at the georgia aquarium the largest aquarium in the world they don't have a whale shark they have four the georgia aquarium is one of the world's most spectacular it houses exhibits ranging from coral reefs to kelp forests salt water to fresh water warm water to cold water and just about everything in between.
But there's no doubt that the 6.3 million gallon ocean voyager exhibit is the most impressive part of the georgia aquarium it's as deep as a three-story building and the main viewing window is larger than a movie theater screen creating a fantastic place to sit and watch the fish go by and that's named after a park in taiwan i enjoy the bubble window where i can relax and watch the sharks there's also a tunnel through the ocean voyager so people can walk underneath the marine life which includes some of nature's most magnificent animals like manta rays and whale sharks keeping manta rays and whale sharks in captivity is difficult first of all these are huge animals mantas grow larger than a car and whale sharks larger than a bus so they need a lot of space but they pose another interesting challenge as well both are filter feeders in the wild they strain their planktonic food by swimming with an open mouth and capturing small animals from the water on their gill rakers in an aquarium there's no plankton aquarist had to train the animals for hand feeding to learn how they feed the mantas i make my way to the top of the ocean voyager exhibit a nearly football field sized fish tank there i meet chris cocco the curator of zoological operations.
we'll be staged here and this is where you're going to jump and help us load the ladle he introduces me to biologists christie elo and kelly maples the aquarists who are going to show me how to feed the mantis all right this is christie and kelly hi jonathan jonathan kelly nice to meet you biologists up here that work the animals every day you guys are lucky the mantas are fed a combination of krill and small fish from a ladle since the mantis can't swim in place they have to be fed while they swim by gently ladling the food out in front of their mouths wow fantastic here we go we'll fill it up about that much that's good excellent after observing a few times now it's my turn to try okay and then you just trickle it out yeah the key is to not dump it too soon she's gonna stick with you and stick with the ladle so a little more or then um i know this is i'm a little nervous there's all these people watching i don't want to mess it up i mean it looks so easy but i know it's not the the one thing that we do ask the one thing that it can be a little difficult when you get a little bit of water and as you go try to keep the ladle out in front of her she gets moving kind of fast so it is possible to kind of hit her in the face with the ladle how's that all right thank you very much thank you so much that was cool how many people get to do that i got to feed a manta ray that is so cool feeding the whale sharks is even more complicated it involves the aquarists using small boats to keep ahead of the moving whale sharks [Music] this is like a precision ballet of whale shark feeding these ropes go all the way across the tank and each aquarist has to pull themselves along in a boat scooping out the food staying just ahead of the whale shark but what's really amazing is that each whale shark gets a different diet so they're only feeding one particular.
shark and the sharks are trained to only follow one particular boat the best part about it is nobody bumps into each other it's amazingly well orchestrated and really i can't imagine how long it took to train the sharks to do this while i get the bird's eye view of the feeding from above the aquarium visitors get the fisheye view from below in the tunnel with the sharks feeding directly overhead [Music] if feeding these animals looks a little complicated imagine how hard it was to get them here it all started in taiwan where the sharks are hunted for food the georgia aquarium teamed up with a local fisherman to capture a live whale shark once they had it in a pen they transferred it to a specially made sling [Music] then it was transferred into a custom tank with life support for an overseas flight [Music] [Music] finally the shark was flown on a private charter across the pacific all the way to atlanta where it was driven to the aquarium [Music] it's quite a journey for a shark given how expensive and difficult it is to get whale sharks all the way to the georgia aquarium the staff isn't taking any chances when it comes to their care the rooms where food is prepared are nearly as clean as operating rooms and the water quality is constantly monitored i spend some time down in the pump room with john massen the assistant manager of life support john this place is huge tell me about these pumps well here at the georgia aquarium we have about 36 50 horsepower pumps on this side of the room 34 25 horsepower pumps on the other side which means we pump about 140 000 gallons a minute through this room which is enough to turn over 6.3 million gallons in under an hour so you can pump the entire exhibit 6.3 million gallons in one hour yeah actually we can it's uh equivalent of one of these pumps can actually fill a swimming pool in about 15 minutes which about 30 000 gallons so each one does about 2 000 gallons wow that's a lot of water it is a lot notice there's no leaks we try to minimize all of our leaks at least yes good plumbing yeah it's nice now you might be wondering if you're in atlanta georgia and you want to have 6.3 million gallons of ocean water what do you do well instant ocean gigantic bags of powdered sea salt and minerals mix it with fresh water and you got ocean and i'm about ready to try diving in this inland ocean so i head upstairs for my briefing with dive master devin fleming all right so basically once we get done here we're going to get you guys set up in the locker rooms we're going to throw in the dog for you move your gear down there uh it is also uh basically valet diving so once we get done with the briefing uh you guys are gonna get a change and we're gonna head down to the dock uh just put your fins your mouse and gloves on we'll get your gear put on for you guys and then we're gonna ask you do a forward roll into the water once your dive masters cleared you to go while i go and get my gear on they put the dock in the water they don't leave it in all the time because the animals might injure themselves on it now the moment i've been waiting for all day oh and look they gave me a sign so i won't mistake my gear for anybody else you know what's interesting about this is they don't want to get any contaminants into the exhibit so they don't even want us to use our own dive gear we have to use wetsuits from the aquarium uh bcs regulators everything they were they were really nice though and they let me use my own fins but first we had to put them in disinfectant so they are now extremely clean yeah they won't hurt you at all all right let's go check it out there's a whale shark right under me oh that's pretty cool before i even have my camera a whale shark swim silently right below the dock it's hard to believe that i'm in a giant fish tank with a whale shark on the bottom a great hammerhead comes over to check me out i follow devin down towards the deep end of the exhibit and tallulah the manta ray swims over to say hello soon i pass over the tunnel with lots of people inside they're looking up at me and i can't help but think how lucky i am to be able to do this dive i wave to the kids and keep moving with devin to the deep part of the exhibit a whale shark with a school of jacks keeping him company swims over me [Music] the whale sharks move around this huge tank in circles and figure eights they're used to the divers and don't mind us at all there's so much marine life in this exhibit that sometimes i forget i'm doing a dive in an aquarium my camera moves from whale shark to great hammerhead then on to nandi the other manta ray doing barrel rolls then back to another hammerhead through the enormous viewing window the crowd watches the action a sand tiger shark passing right in front of the glass the experience is almost overwhelming it would take quite a few dives to get used to this i just can't believe my eyes there are so many fish on the bottom a sawfish catches my attention this is a kind of ray with a saw-like nose for hunting prey i've never even seen one of these in the wild but they have nearly a dozen of them in this exhibit [Music] one of the aquarium staff divers peacefully enjoys a sand tiger shark lazily drifting by in spite of their fierce looking teeth these sharks are no threat to people they eat smaller prey soon my dive nears the end on our way back to the shallow end of the exhibit i pass once again over the tunnel with the people looking up and tallulah buzzes by again as if to bid me farewell devin gives me the signal to head up to the surface it was such a short dive i don't know if i can bring myself to getting out of the water i have never been on a dive with so many species of fish i don't even know where to point my camera i gotta go back in maybe they won't notice if i stay just a little while longer this is one dive i just don't want to end you
