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November 2005
Crowds flood big opening
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“It’s official. It’s open!”
With those words, volunteer Bryan Shaw, 36, of Duluth welcomed the first of more than 10,000 people expected at the Georgia Aquarium on Wednesday.
The world’s largest aquarium opened to the general public with fewer glitches than earlier in the week when season ticket holders tested it out and found frustrating delays trying to park, get through security and obtain laminated passes.
The aquarium’s Web site and call center, however, continued to work poorly for scores of people trying to buy tickets or make reservations.
For the hundreds of people who had already made reservations and lined up well before the 9 a.m. opening, there was little trouble making their way inside .
“Oh, it’s so much better,” aquarium Executive Director Jeff Swanagan said of how staffers handled the crowd. “I’m so happy it’s improved.” Once inside, visitors were wowed by the massive displays.
“Daddy, look at the jellyfish!” cried Christian Jones, 4, pointing above his head. The Sandy Springs child was mesmerized by the glowing jellyfish floating up and down in the dark tank while his father, Chris Jones, 32, tried to coax him to move on. The child turned to a blue, illuminated tank in the Tropical Diver gallery. “Look, more jellyfish!”
Jones, who purchased tickets online three weeks ago, said his family rode MARTA and arrived at the aquarium at 8:15 a.m. He said it took him only 30 minutes to get in when the doors opened. “I expected it to be longer,” Jones said.
Several kids flocked to the touch pool near the Georgia Explorer gallery, waiting for a personal encounter with little stingrays and bonnethead sharks. Nicolas Reich, 4, of Duluth kept his hand in the water until, all of a sudden, he felt the back of one of the sharks. “He feels, like, smooth,” the giggling child told his father, Vince Reich, 43. “He knows sharks better than his ABCs,” the father said.
Retired teacher Dianne Lockwood, 62, of Lilburn said she was pleased with the mix of education and entertainment. She especially liked the touch-screen displays in each gallery that pop up interesting facts about the more than 100,000 fish and mammals in the 500,000-square-foot facility.
“I was almost afraid I’d be disappointed. I’ve heard so much about it,” Lockwood said. “I can’t wait to bring my grandkids.”
Aquarium spokesman Dave Santucci said the facility is fully booked through the weekend.
The rush to get tickets had been fueled by the national attention the aquarium has generated. CBS, CNN, the “Good Day Atlanta” TV show and six radio stations reported from the $290 million aquarium.
Officials late Tuesday increased the Web site’s bandwidth and added a subcontractor to their call center operations. On Wednesday, however, visitors to the Web site (www.georgiaaqua rium.org) and callers continued to find trouble getting through to the aquarium (404-581-4000).
Swanagan said planning ahead is still key. “I’m encouraging people to think about Christmas through New Year’s Day,” he said.
The day also attracted protests but far fewer than the dozens Monday. Mike Vosburg-Casey, an advocate for the homeless, stood alone outside the aquarium’s exit all morning, holding up a sign that said “House people before fish” and clanging a can of loose change.
At noon, 20-year-old Micah Risk took standing up for a cause to another level, appearing topless in a mermaid costume and crammed into a small cage.
“I’m just trying to boycott the world’s largest sea prison,” said Risk, who was one of three protestors with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
But there were no security problems, security workers said, other than grumblings from some visitors whose pocket knives and cigarette lighters were taken before they entered.
Inside, a line quickly formed with kids wanting to take a photo with the aquarium’s large orange mascot, Deepo. But another line was longer. It led to Bernie Marcus, the Home Depot co-founder and aquarium benefactor.
“Thank you,” visitors called out to Marcus as they passed by. The 76-year-old billionaire, in turn, waved.
“It does my heart good,” said Marcus, who put up $250 million of the money needed to build the aquarium. “This is why I did it.”
— Staff writers Ernie Suggs and Jim Tharpe contributed to this article.
Doors open to everybody
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“It’s official. It’s open!”
With those words, volunteer Bryan Shaw of Duluth welcomed the first of more than 10,000 people expected to visit the Georgia Aquarium today.
The world’s largest aquarium opened to the general public with fewer glitches than earlier in the week.
While its Web site and call center continued to respond slowly to demand for tickets, the hundreds of people who had made reservations and had lined up outside the massive fish tank well before the 9 a.m. opening had little trouble making their way inside.
Once inside, they were wowed by the massive displays.
“Daddy, look at the jellyfish,” cried Christian Jones, 4, pointing above his head. The Sandy Springs child was mesmerized by the glowing jelly fish in the dark tank while his father, Chris Jones, 32, tried to coax him to move on.
Jones, who purchased tickets online three weeks ago, said his family took MARTA and arrived at the aquarium at 8:15 a.m. He said it only took him 30 minutes to get in when the doors opened.
“I expected it to be longer,” Jones said.
Several kids immediately flocked to the touch pool, waiting for a personal encounter with stingrays and bonnethead sharks. Nicolas Reich, 4, of Duluth, eagerly kept his hand in the water until all of a sudden he felt the back of one of the sharks. “He feels, like, smooth,” the giggling child told his father, Vince Reich, 43. “He knows sharks better than his ABC’s,” the father said.
The rush to get tickets to the hottest attraction in town has been fueled by the national attention the aquarium has generated. CBS, CNN, the “Good Day Atlanta” TV show and six radio stations were broadcasting from the aquarium, today, once again inflating interest.
Aquarium spokesman Dave Santucci said the facility is fully booked through the weekend, and only those who have made reservations are getting in. Still, many people have flocked to the aquarium’s Web site and called its offices hoping to buy tickets, only to find trouble getting through.
The Web site (www.georgiaaquarium.org) and call center were still swamped early today. Officials late Tuesday increased the Web site’s bandwith twelvefold and added a subcontractor to their call center operations. Many callers, however, were getting busy signals when they dialed the call center (404-581-4000).
Shaw, one of more than 700 volunteers working at the aquarium, was just as excited about the opening as those passing through the doors.
“I just wanted to be a part of this new great addition to this city,” the BellSouth project manager said.
Staff writers Ernie Suggs and Jim Tharpe contributed to this report.
Tickets as rare as fish inside
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s easy to get into the Georgia Aquarium as long as you are Matt Lauer or a whale shark.
But if you are one of the many metro Atlanta residents who tried to buy a ticket on Tuesday you already know that getting a ticket is no swim in the park.
I know. I tried it myself. My bosses, facing a flood of e-mail and telephone calls complaining of the difficulties of buying tickets online or by telephone, asked me to check things out.
I started, like most of you, with the Web site: www.georgiaaquarium.org.
I was greeted by a stalled site and the unwelcome news that it was “experiencing a high volume of traffic.”
OK. That made sense. So I tried again. This time I actually got to the part of the site that offers to sell tickets. I hit the enter key. After a couple of moments of grinding, the Web site had more bad news for me:
“An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current Web address.”
Don’t you hate it when that happens?
In an attempt to be helpful, the Web site said I should “review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated.”
I try not to review stack traces when I’m in a bad mood. And I was. So I decided it might be easier just to telephone for tickets.
I dialed 411 to get the number. The automated software couldn’t decipher my Southern accent when I said “Georgia Aquarium.” But soon I was transferred to an operator who speaks my language.
Armed with the number, I call.
I had already been warned by an editor that many of our readers reached one of those maddening menus only to be disconnected before being able to place a ticket order.
Those are the lucky ones. I never reached a menu. Instead, the phone rang and rang. But there was no answer.
Aquariums have been unlucky for me since I was in the second grade and my guppies died.
Visitors’ cash flows freely
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Acworth mother Deryl HefÂlin, 47, opened her arms, and Georgia Aquarium T-shirts, plush versions of aquarium mascot Deepo, a stuffed beluga whale, magnets and stickers spilled out onto the gift shop counter.
“She’s already got two bags in her hand,” Heflin’s husband, Bob, 57, noted before handing over his credit card to add $66.69 to his tab.
“This is our second trip,” Deryl Heflin said gleefully.
From $10 parking to $6.99 Deepo toys and $2 bottled water, patrons have been plunking down fistfuls of credit cards and cash since the world’s largest aquarium opened Monday. Already, about 28,000 visitors have experienced Atlanta’s newest attraction and spent untold thousands of dollars there.
“Hey, we gotta pay for the place,” joked Dwight Friday, a 55-year-old chiropractor from Smyrna, as he entered the aquarium’s gift shop. “It’s like Disneyland — maybe a little bit high, but I guess you have to pay for the ambience.”
Although philanthropist Bernie Marcus and some of Atlanta’s elite corporations have funded the construction cost, annual operating expenses estimated at more than $40 million will be covered by ticket sales, ballroom rentals and a percentage of souvenir and food sales.
Between marveling at otters, whales, sharks and other sea life in the $290 million attraction, thousands of visitors are shopping for souvenirs and stopping for lunch.
On Tuesday, Suwanee mother Jessica Brumer, 39, carried a tray of two cheeseburgers, french fries, three drinks and two desserts through a crowd as son Max, 8, followed with his own tray of fried chicken fingers, an orange drink, two Oreo ice cream bars and a lollipop.
With a 20 percent discount granted to all annual pass holders and the novel approach of buying only kids’ meals for herself and her husband, Brumer paid only $20.91 for lunch.
“That 20 percent was quite a savings,” Brumer said as she sat down to eat with her husband, son and daughter. “But I was disappointed that it was $10 to park.”
An aquarium spokesman declined to say how much of the money generated by concessions — which are operated by outside vendors — is returned to the aquarium. Judging from the long lines at Cafe Aquaria and the Beyond the Reef gift shop — which everyone must pass through on the way out — few seemed concerned about where the money might be going. After all, many already had spent hundreds of dollars for annual passes and the chance to view the attraction before the general public, who will be able to visit the aquarium starting today.
Mohamed Khan, a 42-year-old hospital nurse from Kennesaw, paid $324.50 for annual passes for himself, his wife and four children. He spent an additional $100 on movie passes, lunch and souvenirs Tuesday. “We’ll be back right after Christmas,” he said.
Randy Grimes, a 45-year-old UPS manager from Kennesaw, pulled out $14 from his pocket to pay for tickets to the aquarium’s 3-D movie before he and his sons entered. But after Mitchell, 6, and Jonathan, 8, said they didn’t want to wait in line for lunch and neither found much in the souvenir shop, Grimes walked out having spent only $31.50. “I had anticipated spending 100 bucks,” he said.
Most families were planning to pay for parking, lunch and souvenirs during their first visit to the facility, and few were complaining about the somewhat elevated prices.
“It was worth it to me to get to share this place with him and Amanda,” Alpharetta resident Linda Stovall, 65, said of her daughter and grandson Ben, 5, who was clutching two plastic whale sharks Stovall had bought for $15.98.
“You just kind of pull out all the stops when it comes to spending time with your family,” she said.
Of course, some people did leave the aquarium empty-handed. Tom and Greer Broadwater of Tyrone said they didn’t have any grandchildren for whom to buy presents. Besides, Greer Broadwater, 56, said: “We don’t need any more junk.”
— Staff writer Jim Tharpe contributed to this article.
Fish fans go wild to get in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The good news for the Georgia Aquarium — it’s the hottest ticket in town. That’s also the bad news.
Callers and computer users overwhelmed the aquarium’s call center and Web site Monday and Tuesday, stranding thousands of people trying to buy tickets to get a peek at the world’s biggest fish tank in downtown Atlanta.
“We’re taking calls all day, but the problem is the volume,” Jeff Swanagan, the aquarium’s executive director said Tueday morning. “You might have a better chance with a lottery ticket than trying to get in right now.”
By today, he said, officials plan to increase the call center’s capacity by adding a hired subcontractor. And they will quadruple the capacity of the Web site. The call center had already doubled its original capacity to 19 people for the opening, but that proved inadequate, Swanagan said.
“You can’t build your church for Easter Sunday,” he said. “But now I’m thinking that might have been a good idea.”
The overload hit Monday — the facility’s opening day for annual pass holders — after NBC’s “Today” show broadcast from the attraction. The Web site (www.georgiaaquarium.org) also was overwhelmed.
The crush abated Monday night, but resumed Tuesday.
The 8-million-gallon aquarium, which holds more than 100,000 fish and other animals, has been the focus of intense publicity on local, national and international stages. CNN and CBS will broadcast from the aquarium today, its official grand opening.
Mark Chute, a telecommunications worker from Dallas, Ga., — on the fringe of metro Atlanta — said Tuesday that he had tried for two days to buy tickets on the aquarium’s Web site for his wife and 12-year-old daughter.
“We’re looking forward to going,” Chute said. “We’re very proud of it. But we can’t get to the information we need to get inside.” Visitors who bought tickets before Monday apparently had little trouble, Swanagan said.
About 14,000 season pass holders toured the aquarium Monday and Tuesday as part of a controlled or so-called “soft opening” intended to work out kinks before today’s grand opening.
The aquarium is using a “time ticketing” system that requires visitors to book their visit in advance with a specific arrival time. They can stay as long as they like once they arrive.
General admission ticket holders can visit beginning today, but they, too, must book their visit ahead of time.
Swanagan said officials are surprised not only by the volume of ticket demand, but also by the geographical reach of the demand. “People are buying annual passes from Texas and Michigan,” he said. “It’s amazing.”
Aquarium spokesman Dave Santucci said the aquarium’s time slots are mostly booked through Thanksgiving weekend.
“We expect another huge number of calls after all the publicity with the grand opening,” he said. “We’re asking people to please be patient until all the media attention dies down a bit.”
Swanagan said it took him three tries Tuesday to get through to the aquarium’s Web site and four calls to get through to the call center.
Ticket demand had been building for weeks, he said. The $290 million aquarium had sold 80,000 annual passes by the time its doors opened. But it was the “Today” show broadcast Monday that blew the lid off, he said. The show reaches 6 million domestic viewers and millions more overseas.
“We’re going to start forwarding all foreign calls to Matt Lauer,” one of the “Today” hosts, Swanagan said.
Ticket lines, Web site jammed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Callers and computer users overloaded the Georgia Aquarium’s telephone lines and Web site for a second day today, frustrating those who want to get tickets for a peek inside the world’s largest aquarium.
“The good news is we’re the hottest ticket in town,” said Jeff Swanagan, executive director of the aquarium. “But right now, that’s the bad news as well.”
Swanagan said the aquarium’s 19-person call center was overloaded Monday — the aquarium’s opening day for annual pass-holders — after NBC’s Today show broadcast from the big fish tank. The Web site (www.georgiaaquarium.org) was also overwhelmed.
The overload abated Monday night, but resumed today, he said.
Swanagan said officials hope to have both problems resolved by Wednesday. He said the facility is subcontracting with a call center that has unlimited capacity. And he said technicians are working to quadruple the Web site’s capacity.
“We know it’s frustrating for people trying to get through, but all of those problems should be fixed very soon,” he said.
The aquarium is holding a two-day controlled opening that permits only annual pass-holders inside. The facility is also using a “time-ticketing” system that requires visitors to book their arrival time in advance. They can stay as long as they like once they arrive.
The aquarium’s “grand opening” is Wednesday, when some general admissions will be allowed. However, those ticket-holders also are required to book a time slot in advance.
The aquarium has received massive publicity from local, national and international outlets.
Even when the telephone and computer problems are resolved, don’t expect to immediately visit the ship-shaped facility at the north end of Centennial Olympic Park.
“We’re pretty much booked for the first five days,” Swanagan said.
Our ocean — discovered
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was a day of a dozen glitches drowned out by a thousand cries of “Wow!”
The Georgia Aquarium opened its doors to the paying public for the first time Monday, and scores of Georgians rushed in to stare into the faces of whale sharks, beluga whales, sea otters and 100,000 or so other exotic critters in the world’s biggest fish tank.
“Wow, wow and wow,” said Liz Lonergan, who with her husband, Dennis, was one of the first visitors to see the massive window that fronts the 6.2-million gallon Ocean Voyager tank. “This is amazing.”
The couple, expecting twins in April, left their Toco Hill home early Monday to get a glimpse of the big window and the creatures behind it, which include whale sharks, hammerhead sharks, giant grouper and thousands of golden trevally.
“It’s like diving, but you don’t have to worry about your oxygen running out,” said Dennis Lonergan.
Aquarium officials unveiled the ship-shaped aquarium in downtown Atlanta to annual pass holders as part of a two-day “soft opening.” The limited opening is intended to iron out problems and determine if aquarium officials need to tweak the time-ticketing system they have in place. The system requires visitors to book their visits by their arrival time. (Once inside, they are allowed to stay as long as they wish.)
General admission ticket holders will not be allowed into the aquarium until Wednesday, and they, too, have to reserve a time slot to get inside. Aquarium officials said most time slots for the first week are already booked.
Crowds logjammed quickly Monday morning in front of the Ocean Voyager window and near the belugas’ tank in the Cold Water Quest gallery. There also were large crowds near the sea otters and in front of the large coral exhibit in the Tropical Diver exhibit.
“We figured we could handle about 3,500 people at a time in here,” said Jeff Swanagan, the aquarium’s executive director. “We want to make sure everyone has a quality experience, so we’ll be monitoring it closely the first few days and making adjustments as we need to.”
Aquarium officials estimate about 14,000 people visited Monday.
There were 30-minute waits at one point in the early afternoon to exit the aquarium’s 1,600-space parking garage. And some season pass holders showed up without the special bar codes they were supposed to print out for entry. Swanagan said some aquarium e-mails apparently got stuck in pass holders’ spam filters.
There were hourlong waits to get laminated season passes, and many visitors opted to come back for those. They have 90 days to get the permanent passes.
The aquarium’s Web site (www.georgiaaqurium.org) crashed at one point because of heavy volume, and the call center had trouble keeping up with callers trying to purchase tickets.
But those snags didn’t seem to bother most of those who braved the rain and chilly temperatures. Many said they wanted to be a part of what they considered a historic day for the city.
“It’s the nicest thing next to the ocean without having to put the kids in the car,” said Susan McGlennon of Buckhead, who brought her children, Seamus, 2, and Fiona, 10 months, to the opening. “We’re coming three times this week.”
People stood 10 deep in front of the belugas’ window at time. Small children waved and chanted, “Gasper, Gasper” as the injured beluga rescued from a Mexico City amusement park quickly became a crowd favorite, turning his ghost-white head and appearing to look his human admirers right in the eyes.
Six-year-old twins Madeleine and Morgan Kahn of Roswell arrived shortly after 9 a.m. in matching pink-and-fuchsia dresses. Each wore pink-and-lavender eyeshadow and silver-sequined fishnet caps.
“We’re mermaids,” Madeleine explained as she danced around on the sidewalk, oblivious to fact that she was standing at the back of a line that wrapped from the front entrance to behind the building.
The day began with some major-league exposure that kicked off a week of worldwide publicity for the aquarium. NBC’s “Today” show personalities Matt Lauer and Al Roker did more than a dozen cut-ins from the fish tank.
At day’s end, Home Depot co-founder and aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus, 76, was still bounding through the crowds, showing off exhibits to individual visitors. Marcus spent $250 million of his fortune on the $290 million facility.
“Isn’t this something,” he grinned. “I just love this.”
— Staff writers Bridget Gutierrez and Stacy Shelton contributed to this article.
First arrivals awed, proud
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The allure and fear of the deep sea were the bait Monday for Lisa Crawford and Carey Overby.
The 29-year-old friends from Decatur were the first season pass holders to enter the Georgia Aquarium on Monday. They had planned for two years for this moment, and set up camp in the rain at 4:45 am.
Crawford wore a blue felt hat in the shape of a fish for the occasion. She loves the ocean and has vacationed at “every beach in Florida.”
Overby wore a pink octopus hat. Being underwater scares her. On a scuba trip to the Cayman Islands, she had a panic attack.
“This is a way that I can closely experience the ocean all around me,” she said just before walking in.
Also at stake for them was their hometown’s reputation. Both were born and raised in metro Atlanta and roomed at UGA. When people say there’s nothing to do in Atlanta, they think that’s unfair — and hope the aquarium will help change that image.
“I want to be wowed and know that we did it right,” said Crawford, waiting for Deepo the orange mascot fish to welcome her in.
At 9 a.m. the sea opened to landlocked Atlantans. The friends had only an hour before Overby had to leave for work.
They headed directly to the Tropical Diver coral reef exhibit. Waves crest over the top of a tank that curves across the ceiling to the floor, and a spectrum of colorful fish and coral.
“That was the experience I wanted to have — underwater,” Overby said.
She wasn’t claustrophobic. Later in their whirlwind tour, she even entered a little cave and popped her head into a glass enclosure to see African penguins and have her picture taken.
The aquarium, and her investment in time and money, lived up to her hopes and expectations.
She walked through the gift shop on the way out. “I know where everyone’s getting Christmas from this year,” she said.
As season pass holders, they’ll spend hours here in the future. Monday was just their first dip in the inside ocean, soothing and enthralling like the real one.
Rallies push for animals, homeless
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In weather fit for, well, a sea otter, dozens of demonstrators lined up outside the Georgia Aquarium to protest everything from the plight of the homeless to the plight of, well, sea otters.
“They use words like education, conservation and research, but it is all part of the same cycle,” said Susan Sherwin, campaigns manager for the World Society for the Protection of Animals at a news conference. “Even well-intentioned facilities add fuel to the fire.”
Sherwin’s WSPA, represented part of the alphabet soup of organization’s protesting the opening of the aquarium, or “fish prison,” as it is known by the folks of PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“If the aquarium really wanted to preserve the oceans, they wouldn’t be ripping fish away from their homes and imprisoning them in the equivalent of a bathtub,” said Karin Robertson, manager of PETA’s Fish Empathy Project. They brought Freeda Fish, a 6-foot clue mascot.
But at least the Beluga whales, leafy sea dragons and whale sharks had a home. “We are calling on the city of Atlanta to rearrange our economic priorities and house people before fish,” said Heather Bargeron, press secretary for the group. “Our priorities should be about caring for people dying on our streets.”
Nearby, state Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas (D-Atlanta) led about a dozen protesters positioned on Luckie Street in singing freedom songs and carrying signs reading “House People Before Fish.”
“This aquarium symbolizes corporate greed,” said Thomas, who was with a group called The Movement to Redeem the Soul of Atlanta. “It gives you a chance to see suffering in communities a miles from here, while they are asking people to pay $22 a pop to see fish in an unnatural inhabitat.”
NBC show includes big dippers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:04 a.m. — Standing just inside the front doors of the Georgia Aquarium, NBC’s Matt Lauer is bantering via satellite with his “Today” show co-host, Katie Couric in New York. He is flanked by two dozen radio contest winners, many of whom are clearly more interested in Lauer’s looks than the 8 million gallons of water surrounding them. “Matt, Whale you marry me?” gushed one of the signs in the background.
7:09 — Lauer’s sidekick, weather guy Al Roker, is across the aquarium’s atrium, perched atop a staircase near the Cold Water Quest exhibit.”We’re talking about water inside today,” he chirps on-air a few seconds later, “and we’ve got water outside,” noting the steady drizzle.
7:45 — Aquarium staffers use ladders to help Roker into a stingray tank, where he jokes with the crowd about the “shrinking effect” of the 76-degree water. Lauer takes off his shoes, dons waders and dips into the water for a live hit at the top of the hour. “I hope nobody bites them,” jokes aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus.
8:15 — Lauer now is helping feed the sea lions while interviewing their caretakers. Technicians have spent days preparing each of the choreographed segments, making sure the lighting and other elements are just right. At the last minute, Lauer decides to squat instead of stand to get closer to the animals. “Lower that light! We need the light lowered!” shouts a producer, as technicians scurry to adapt.
8:30 — Roker and Lauer are back together in the Ocean Voyager gallery, where a pair of whale sharks looks on curiously. “Katie, we ought to get the Windex concession here. We’d make a fortune,” Roker jokes.
9:07 — Lauer says goodbye to Katie and leaves it to Roker to finish out the show’s third hour.
Life in the tank: Ask a whale shark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I am the ocean voyager, the one they call “Ralph.� You can distinguish me from my comrade, Norton, by the golden trevally that swim by my face, buoyed by my current. They do not bother me. I may inhale one with my krill during second breakfast, but I spit him out again. No harm done. We watch out for each other.
The trevally say something strange is going on this morning, but I can already sense the change. The potato cod are skittish, and the rays have migrated south to the viewing window.
What is happening over there? The one they call “Bernie� has come early, far earlier than usual. Yes, we all recognize him. We know he must be the biggest fish on the other side, because he, too, has a posse of trevally-like creatures following him wherever he goes. Perhaps they are swimming lazily in his current. Perhaps they are hoping to share his krill.
But now the air-breathing trevally are schooling in numbers we have never seen. They have brought their fry. They point devices that flash and sparkle like bioluminescent plankton. They gasp and shriek. The goliath groupers bulge their lips in fury. The hammerhead sharks contort their bellies against the window to protest the presence of these intruders.
Norton and I try to calm the frantic fish swarming alongside our flanks. The cubarra snappers whisper stories of a dark abattoir called the sushi bar; I assure them there is no such thing. Besides, we are safe on this side.
But now vast lights shine through the window. The leader of the othersiders, the one they call “Matt,� stands before them. He is, well, skinnier than I would’ve thought but seems a gentle sort. Let us hear him out.
Matt addresses the othersiders as well as an invisible one he calls “Katie.� Bernie speaks with him, which calms us all. Something about this Matt makes me think he understands the inside of a fishbowl.
Perhaps today won’t be so strange after all. Othersiders school beyond the window throughout the day.
Most of the fish stop watching them, but a few remain on edge. I try to calm them. This aquarium has been built for months, I explain as gently as I can. It was about time they’d think of stocking it.
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Sights and sounds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sights and sounds from the opening
• Sarah Meyers, 6, of McDonough won her family a trip to Georgia Aquarium to see the filming of the “Today” show in a call-in contest to Radio Disney. But during the 45-minute wait for the segment to begin filming, her little sister Rachel, 4, became whiny and antsy. She was on the verge of being escorted outside by her mother, Nancy, when an actor dressed as mascot Deepo walked by. “Can I give him a hug, Mommy?” Rachel asked. The hug did the trick.
• After “Today” show host Matt Lauer, standing in front of the Ocean Voyager big window, warned the crowd to turn off their cellphones, one loudly went off. It belonged to his cameraman.
• For one “Today” segment, Matt Lauer and Al Roker put on waders and climbed into the ray tank in front of the Georgia Explorer exhibit. Most of the fans standing around held up cute hand-lettered signs — “Matt, whale you marry me?” — but a couple took advantage of the advertising potential. One person held up a sign for an Atlanta-based interactive marketing and technology firm. Tricia Woodall, a media buying agent for Comcast, held up a banner for her company until aquarium associate Andy Schell made her put it away. “That’s just because BellSouth is a sponser here,” said Woodall. “They’re scared to death of us.”
• Most of the first-day attendees made a beeline for Ocean’s Journey to check out Ralph and Norton. But Andrea Davis, 16, a junior at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, was most curious about the ballroom. “I’m so excited. I want to see the ballroom, but I don’t want to see it. I want to wait till prom night.”
• A staffer for the “Today” was overheard saying that Al Roker was joking he would “be in a rowboat chumming the water for sharks” when Matt Lauer took his dive.
• “Yeah!” “¡Mira!” “That’s awesome!” “Woo-hoo!” — a few of the reactions as people turned the corner and first saw the big window in Ocean’s Journey.
• Friends Betrand Williams and Sandy Mahathirath of Lawrenceville took off work today to be, in their estimation, “among the first 50” season pass holders in line for the 9 a.m. entry. They waited since 7 a.m. in the rain. Once inside, they waited again outside Ocean Voyager because they wanted to be in the first group admitted. They wondered how they would tell the whale sharks apart. “Are they labelled?” asked Mahathirath. “I think they wear name tags,” answered Williams.
Rubber shark accompanies family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was only 11 a.m. but Susan McGlennon, of Buckhead, had already shepherded her children, Seamus, 2, an Fiona, 10-months, through the entire Georgia Aquarium.
“I keep walking in circles so he’ll think it’s something new,� said McGlennon, 37, of her son as she rested on a padded bench inside the Tropical Diver exhibit.
Seamus pressed his hands against the glass and marveled at the hundreds of multi-colored fish swimming among the coral reef. Underneath the stroller, a foot-long rubber shark peeked out of a mesh basket — a decoy planted by his mother for when the family was ready to leave the aquarium, which can only be exited through the gift shop.
“I figured if he brought his shark from home,� McGlennon said, “he wouldn’t need anything [at the gift shop.]�
A traffic jam — inside
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The underwater spectacles on display at the Georgia Aquarium are creating traffic jams of another kind inside the $290 million facility.
At the Ocean Voyager tank, as many as 250 adults and children were gawking at the three-story high window into the world of whale sharks, giant grouper, rays and hammerhead sharks. Many applauded upon witnessing the scene within the world’s second largest aquarium window.
Amphitheater seating just across from the window encouraged many to watch the watery wildlife for over an hour.
Dennis Lonergan, 45, from Toco Hill, sat with his wife Liz.
“Wow! This is amazing,� said Liz Lonergan.
“It’s like diving,� said Dennis Lonergan. “We went to the Caymans for our honeymoon two years ago and this is a lot like that.�
Aquarium director Jeff Swangan said the flow of visitors through the downtown attraction was “pretty good� but the situation would be monitored and perhaps adjusted through the week.
The marine mammals — sea lions, sea otters and beluga whales — are also creating a bit of a logjam with fascinated spectators, he said.
Fish fans brave rain, protests
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Standing in line outside the new Georgia Aquarium shortly after 9 a.m., the Westmorelands, a family from Mableton, looked on as protesters across the street raised signs and chanted, “House people not fish!�
The social commentary didn’t dampen the spirits of the family, who will be among the first to see what is being touted as the world’s largest aquarium.
“I’m excited to see what their reactions are,� said Shirley Westmoreland, 42, of her children, Mason, 9, and Gavin, 4.
The Westmorelands, who are among the season ticket holders being granted entrance for the first time today, already had been standing in line for about 25 minutes without coats. No one was complaining about the chilly, rainy weather.
“We’re hoping to come three of four times this year,� Westmoreland said. “At least.�
The line outside the Georgia Aquarium continued to grow Monday morning. As many as 200 annual pass holders were clustered outside as a steady rain began falling around 8, an hour before the aquarium opened its doors for annual pass holders. “Today� show audience members were let in a few hours earlier.
Aquarium volunteers handed out more than 50 umbrellas, but there was not enough to shield everyone from the rain.
Aquarium director Jeff Swangan said he was pleased to see season pass holders stream through the front door of the attraction at 9 a.m.
“It’s so great just to have regular people coming in,� he said.
Asked if she thought the aquarium would help revive downtown, Kathi Paul, of Sandy Springs, replied “Yes, tremendously! It will attract people from all over, and most will stay to see what else Atlanta has to offer.�
“I grew up in Mobile, on the Gulf, but I’ve never seen some of the creatures I will see today, especially Ralph and Norton,� said Eileen Malatino, of Decatur, an employee of the Centers for Disease Control, referring to the giant whale sharks and Jackie Gleason Show namesakes.
“I know I’ll never get a chance to see them, and a lot of other marine life besides, in the wild,� she added.
Dan Delanty and his wife Sydney, of Canton, arose before dawn to bring their sons Jack, 8, and Max, 5, and the boys’ grandparents, Jack and Sharon Delanty, of Acworth, to the downtown attraction.
“My son Jack wants to see the sharks, especially the big hammerhead,� Dan Delanty said.
“I like sharks,� the boy beamed.
Group advocates for more housing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Downtown has gone to the fish, homelessness protesters shouted this morning at Centennial Park.
“House people before fish!” chanted the raucous crowd of about 50 that began arriving at about 9 a.m., many wearing blue cardboard shark heads.
“A sad day for Atlanta when we choose fish over thousands of homeless,” one protester’s sign read.
“We’re calling on the citizens of Atlanta to redirect their priorities. Before we find the money for a fish house we should find the money to house the poor. We’re concerned that more public housing is being demolished and the residents aren’t being taken care of,” said Heather Bargeron, with the Martin Luther King Campaign for Economic Justice.
The group also shouted out their disdain for Atlanta’s new anti-panhandling ordinance which bans beggars in the downtown area. Fake dollar bills featuring “Barnacle Marcus,” aka aquarium sponsor Bernie Marcus, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and aquarium mascot “Deepo,” bemoan the ban, saying it limits free speech and led to the “unjust jailing of hundreds of Atlantans.”
Mike Vosburg-Casey had a sign that said, “How much is that fishie in the window? $280 million.”
“We need to build an economy that’s sustainable for all people as opposed to the anomaly of this place. We need a living wage, good jobs and health care for the poor,” Vosburg-Casey said.
Protesters from as far away as California were on hand.
“In L.A. we have similar problems, such as the Disney concert hall, which are all about building expensive projects to serve people who have money, so they can spend money, and this type of thing is going on all over the country,” said David Gardner.
The protesters are being watched closely by members of a private security force that oversees the park, the Georgia World Congress Center Authority Police. Officers on bikes scan the crowd from beneath a Brand Atlanta sign featuring the image of a fish and the slogan “Every Day is Opening Day.”
Hey, Mom! I’m pregnant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Allison Zafft’s mom got a pleasant surprise Monday morning, compliments of national TV.
Zafft, who lives in Buford, held up a sign during “The Today Show,” reading, “Hi, Mom. Surprise. I’m pregnant.”
Zafft stood near to aquarium mascot Deepo, and “Today Show” personalities Matt Lauer and Al Roker, who were wading with cownose stingrays.
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Protesters have their say
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As the sun struggles to shine on Centennial Olympic Park this morning, a man dressed as a blue fish flaps a sign saying, “Fish in Tanks? No, thanks!”
Morning commuters rush by the intersection of Luckie and Thurmond streets, honking in appreciation, or is it disdain? It is hard to determine intent from a car horn.
“I’m Freeda Fish,” cries the marine mascot.
Freeda’s less fishy-friends, Karin Robertson, founder of PETA’s “Fish Empathy Project,” and Dino Blanchos, from Chamblee, flap a large sign — “The Whales say ‘No tanks!’”
Another member of the group Georgia Animal Rights Protection passes out animal rights literature.
“This aquarium is teaching … teaching children disrespect for animals,” says Blanchos. “If you want to teach respect for animals, don’t kill, eat, wear or put them in captivity where you shorten their lives in a cruel and inhumane fashion.”
“Originally, they said there would not be mammals,” says Blanchos, “but they lied. Imagine the good that could have been done for humans and animals with the $280 million spent here.
“Too bad Bernie Marcus didn’t buy a sports franchise like his partner.”
A topless mermaid is promised for Wednesday’s protest, the first day the attraction will be open to general admission ticket holders.
The animal rights activists have been told to not leave their corner of the park. Nearby, two anti-protest protestors keep watch on the fish-friendly foursome. They wave signs saying, “We support the Georgia Aquarium” at protesters and aquarium visitors alike.
A small boy, one of about 200 waiting in line to get into the aquarium at 8 a.m., seems intent on testing aquarium safety measures.
“Shark bait!” his sign warns.
In the tank with the rays
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s 7:45 a.m. and Matt Lauer is running late for his next live shot, where he will join Al Roker — and three dozen stingrays — in a tank at the Georgia Explorer exhibit.
Finally, with six minutes to spare, Lauer arrives, takes off his shoes and hops in a pair of rubber waders.
As Lauer and Roker joke with the crowd seconds before air time, aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus looks on.
“I hope nobody bites them,” Marcus jokes.
Crowds arrive in predawn chill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Weather fit for a fish wasn’t enough to deter hundreds of Atlantans — from babies bundled up in their strollers to their parents — from lining up in the wet, 48-degree chill to get into the Georgia Aquarium to see the live broadcast of the “Today” on NBC.
“I was here at 4:45 a.m. and already there were 15, maybe 20, people lined up,” said aquarium volunteer Clay Rising.
By 5:50 a.m., more than 300 people were lined up and waiting patiently to be in the popular morning show’s audience.
Lesley and Sean Goodwin of Senoia brought their children Seth, 8, and 3-year-old J.T., to see the opening day of the watery wonder in downtown Atlanta.
“I think they’re going to love it,” Lesley Goodwin said. “I know I will.”
18-month-old Skyler Melton peered wide-eyed from his stroller while gobbling up fish-shaped candy. His parents, Allison Melton and Daniel Wilkins, waited in line. Like many, the couple said they had won tickets to be in the “Today” show audience.
The Today show started at 7 a.m. The first visitors were allowed into the aquarium at about 6 a.m.
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All eyes on Matt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s 32 minutes before “Today” begins. And Tarryn Reinagel and her three girlfriends can’t wait any longer.
The four Woodstock High seniors drove in from Cherokee County to get a glimpse of Matt Lauer and Al Roker. As the TV lights warmed up in the aquarium’s atrium, Reinagel and friends were looking for the best place to hold their signs.
One of them said, “Matt, whale you marry me?” The other read, “Pucker up, Matt, today is my birthday and I am 18.”
The crowd of about 100 early visitors then broke into a chorus of Happy Birthday. A trim-looking Lauer quietly made his way through the atrium behind them, going unnoticed.
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You know it’s big when Al Roker is here
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s 6:09 a.m., and WXIA-TV meterologist Flip Spiceland is going over the lineup for “11 Alive News Today.”
“Steve will do the Roker cut-ins, and I’ll do the cheap gas story, right?” he says into his microphone.
Spiceland, one of the few people inside the Georgia Aquarium at this hour, is in the main atrium under a sign reading “Georgia Explorer: Discover Our Coast.”
On the other side of a curved wall, 50 radio contest winners are eager to get inside for a front-row seat at the “Today” show. NBC’s Matt Lauer and Al Roker are broadcasting from the aquarium this morning.
“I’m a scuba diver, so this is way cool,” said Dollie Villa, 56, of Smyrna.
Her pal, property manager Helen Smith, had her thoughts elsewhere.
“I’m hoping to get a kiss on each cheek — one from Matt and one from Al,” Smith said.
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Requests for tickets swamp call center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The paying public gets its first peek inside the Georgia Aquarium Monday. But unless you bought a season ticket, the only place you’ll see giant whale sharks, ghostly belugas and frisky sea otters is on morning television.
About 14,000 people who purchased annual passes and reserved time slots will be permitted inside the world’s biggest fish tank the first day, said aquarium Director Jeff Swanagan.
Nearly 80,000 people had purchased annual passes as of Sunday, he said.
“Our call center has been overwhelmed with people wanting tickets,” Swanagan said. “We doubled the staff from 9 to 19, and that still didn’t keep up with it. So we’ve hired a call service company to start Monday to help out.”
Monday and Tuesday, which are completely booked, are considered a “soft opening.” The two days are intended to take some of the crowd pressure off Wednesday’s official grand opening, when visitors can use general admission tickets to get inside the 500,000-square-foot facility.
People who want to visit from Wednesday forward will find few tickets remaining for the aquarium’s first week. Visitors who purchase tickets online (www.georgiaaquarium.org) can view available time slots.
“The aquarium is, for the most part, sold out through Nov. 26,” Swanagan said. “We do, however, have a few thousand tickets available each day beginning on Nov. 27 through the end of December.”
Initially only people who reserve time slots can get into the aquarium. The time-slot system requires that they arrive at a specific time. Once inside, however, they can stay as long as they like.
Aquarium officials estimate it could take three to four hours to see all five galleries, perhaps longer if there are children along and the family stops for a bite to eat at the food court.
The $290 million aquarium, the only one outside Asia to display whale sharks, begins a week marked by major-league publicity.
NBC’s “Today” show will be there Monday, with hosts Matt Lauer and Al Roker doing more than a dozen cut-ins over three hours.
On Wednesday, reporters for CBS’ The Early Show” and CNN will do live feeds from the aquarium.
Sunday the aquarium was a beehive of activity as NBC technicians laid wires and tested lighting in front of the huge window to the whale shark tank. Lauer and his family were scheduled for a private afternoon tour.
Groups plan protests
Several groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, will be on hand to protest today’s opening. PETA plans to unveil a half-naked model in a mermaid’s outfit for Wednesday’s events.
“The sexy mermaid will sit topless in a cage and hold a strategically placed sign that reads, ‘Life Sentence, No Parole,’ making the point that the fish stolen from their homes and crowded into the Georgia Aquarium are innocent of any crime, and yet they’ve been given a life sentence in a fish prison,” said PETA’s Arzinda Jalil.
Karin Robertson, founder of the Norfolk, Va.-based Fish Empathy Project, said her organization will join Atlanta area PETA members to pass out brochures opposing public aquariums, which she contends deplete fish in the wild and confine huge ocean-going animals like belugas and whale sharks in small spaces.
“To us, the tanks look huge,” Robertson said Sunday. “But to a whale or a whale shark, it’s like swimming in a bathtub.”
Located at the north end of Centennial Olympic Park, the aquarium contains more than 100,000 fish and other animals. Its tanks hold more than 8 million gallons of water. The Ocean Voyager tank — home to the whale sharks — holds 6.2 million gallons alone.
Those who brave rainy skies and chilly temperatures for today’s opening will find very tight security to get inside. Visitors will pass through security checkpoints, where bags will be searched. Individuals will be scanned with security wands.
“Security checks me just like everyone else when I walk in,” Swanagan said. “And if they don’t, I yell at them.”
For those driving to the fish tank, the aquarium’s parking garage has 1,600 spaces. It costs $8 for four hours.
About 200 aquarium personnel will be on hand to help visitors find their way and answer their questions about exhibits.
“We plan to make this the world’s most engaging aquarium experience,” Swanagan.
The upkeep costs plenty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There’s the Georgia Aquarium you see. And then there’s the other one.
From fish food to fish surgery, there’s a behind-the-scenes world at the planet’s biggest fish tank that you won’t see when you buy a general admission ticket or annual pass.
Fish commissary
The unschooled might be tempted to call the place the “fish kitchen,” but Ray Davis, the aquarium’s vice president for zoological operations, will quickly remind you it is officially called the “husbandry commissary.” This is the place where technicians prepare the grub for the aquarium’s 100,000-plus fish and other animals.
This stainless steel room has a freezer that holds 20,000 pounds of frozen food at minus 20 Fahrenheit and a refrigerator with a 6,000-pound capacity. It prepares everything from frozen fish for the beluga whales to pre-made “gel diets” for the giant whale sharks. Gel food is specially mixed from a powder and fortified with vitamins, minerals and even algae.
“It’s not the Jell-O that Bill Cosby would sell, but it’s Jell-O,” Davis said.
The whale sharks also eat lots of krill — small shrimp — that has to be thawed and measured in the kitchen before being ladled out to the big fish. Each of the polka-dotted juvenile sharks eats about 34 pounds of krill a day.
Whale sharks, however, are not the most expensive eaters in the aquarium. That distinction belongs to the three dozen or so weedy and leafy sea dragons. They have to be fed live mysids, tiny shrimp that they feed on in the wild. It costs about $50,000 a year to feed the exotic-looking creatures.
The strangest thing found in the kitchen just might be the “fresh frozen plankton” that comes from the North Pacific.
“It’s used to supplement the diet of the jellyfish,” Davis said.
There are also worms for the freshwater fish and even vitamin-fortified romaine lettuce for some of the fish in the coral reef exhibits.
The sea otters are the poster children for gluttony. They have high metabolisms and have to eat up to 25 percent of their body weight in food every day. They enjoy “restaurant quality” clams and fish, Davis said.
“The husbandry commissary, for cleanliness, is held to a higher standard than any restaurant kitchen,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts random inspections of the kitchen, and the aquarium’s lab does routine culture samples to make sure it is sterile.
Davis said the overall food budget for the fish tank “is a moving target right now” but will increase dramatically as exhibits are expanded and animals begin to grow. It is now in the “hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we will move into the millions,” he said.
Fish hospital This place — Davis calls it the “animal care facility” — looks like something out of a science fiction movie. And what they do here can be just as strange.
It is essentially a high-tech surgery unit for fish and the other animals that inhabit the Georgia Aquarium.
“We could bring down a shark or a large grouper or some small butterfly fishes to work on them directly in the surgery suite,” Davis said.
The equipment can also be carried to the largest animals — the beluga whales or whale sharks. Big animals can also be transported to the surgery unit.
Fish can be anesthetized with a special chemical bath. Their heart rates and blood gases are monitored during surgery.
Why would an animal end up here? There are always the good old-fashioned brawls that require stitches. Grouper have been known to develop gastric blockages that have to be cleared with surgery. And Davis once — at another facility — assisted with the Caesarean birth on a cownose ray.
The aquarium has hired folks like Howard Krum, the manager of veterinarian services, who has developed groundbreaking practices in aquatic medicine.
“We will have the leading aquatic medicine training available,” Davis said.
Filtration system The problem with fish tanks — as everyone with a home aquarium knows — is keeping the water clean. Imagine trying to do that with tanks that hold 8 million gallons of water and more than 100,000 fish.
The Georgia Aquarium currently has to filter the water in its giant displays every 85 minutes or so. As the fish in the tanks mature, the water will have to be filtered every 60 minutes.
A huge battery of whining pumps moves water from the tanks through “fractionators” that produce a foaming action. Wastes in the water adhere to the foam, which is removed.
The partially cleaned water is then pumped through a pressure sand filtration system for final cleaning before it is pumped back into its tanks.
“There are a lot of things we can do to mimic Mother Nature and keep the same process going,” Davis said. “That’s why we need the filters.”
A small portion of the water is “side streamed,” where it is either heated or chilled to help maintain the temperature in the tanks. The whale shark tank, for example, is kept relatively warm. The beluga tank, however, is kept at a chilly 55 degrees for the cold-water mammals.
Very little water is lost in the process.
“We compare it to a very large supermarket, and we’re using less than that,” Davis said.
Window cleaning
Having the world’s biggest fish tank means little if people can’t see the fish.
There are more than 12,000 square feet of acrylic windows (they weigh about 328 tons) at the Georgia Aquarium, and every inch has to be cleaned — from the tank side and the visitor side.
Davis said the aquarium is contemplating doing some of the cleaning during visitor hours because visitors like to watch the divers working. The divers also lend perspective to some of the larger displays.
Cleaners use cotton diapers and something called “heavy delta,” which is synthetic nylon like that used in fish seines, to keep the acrylic looking crystal clear.
Some areas have to be cleaned more than others. The clear tunnel through the whale shark tank has to be cleaned every other day, Davis said. The big window for that display currently has to be cleaned every day — one of the problems is all of the media attention. The television lights shining on the acrylic causes algae to grow faster.
How Atlanta landed the big one
It began on a flight over the Atlantic Ocean
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Swanagan and Bruce Carlson stood on a vacant lot a few years back and watched as the morning sun dawned over the Atlanta skyline.
Five hours from the nearest ocean, the aquarium experts were on the hunt for the perfect place to put the nation’s largest indoor coral reef and the hundreds of brilliantly colored critters it would support.
“We had to know not only how the sun came over the site, but the precise effect of the skyscrapers on the sunlight,” explained Swanagan, who knew that a giant skylight was needed in order for the coral exhibit’s delicate organisms to survive.
Three years later, that carefully placed coral exhibit is being readied to welcome visitors to the Georgia Aquarium — the planet’s biggest fish tank — which will open its doors to annual pass holders Monday morning.
The 500,000-square-foot facility holds 8 million gallons of water in its tanks and more than 100,000 animals, including whale sharks, the biggest fish on Earth. It’s the only aquarium outside Asia to display the gentle plankton eaters, which can grow to the size of a Greyhound bus.
The aquarium, a huge ship-shaped structure that looms at the northern end of Centennial Olympic Park, began life as the vague vision of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, 76, a wisecracking billionaire disdainful of governmental interference and not afraid of big ideas. Before it was completed, the project would consume $290 million, most of it from Marcus’ own bank account.
Swanagan, the aquarium’s executive director, and Carlson, vice president of education, conservation and exhibits, were recruited early to lead a staff that would eventually number 220 full-time and 120 part-time employees, who will run the aquarium along with hundreds of local volunteers.
Civic boosters predict that the aquarium will attract more than 2 million visitors a year. They hope it will spark a downtown revival not seen since the 1996 Olympic Games.
The aquarium opens just a month after the retail outlets of nearby Atlantic Station and on the heels of a major expansion of the High Museum of Art. The World of Coca-Cola museum will open next to the aquarium in 2007, and Atlanta is still in the running to snag the NASCAR hall of fame, which would be located nearby.
“All of this creates a critical mass for downtown that will move us to a new level of tourism,” Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said. “You add that to the sports venues we have, and it’s clear there is a new energy in the city. It brings jobs; it brings business.”
A study by Georgia State University professor Bruce Seaman predicted that the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola will boost the state’s economy by nearly $200 million a year, pump an additional $255 million into state and local tax coffers over 15 years, and create as many as 3,300 jobs throughout Georgia. The study was commissioned by Coca-Cola and Marcus.
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The high hopes began high over the Atlantic Ocean more than four years ago, with a man who never owned a home aquarium and never considered putting a koi pond in his back yard.
Marcus, returning from Israel, asked then-Gov. Roy Barnes, who was on a trade mission, to join him for the ride home in his private jet. Marcus told Barnes that he wanted to do something large and lasting for Georgia. He wanted to pay back the city and state whose people made his first Home Depot stores a success in the late 1970s, back in the days when success was anything but a given.
“All of the blessings in my life are because of the people of Georgia,” Marcus said.
By the third hour of conversation, Marcus, a Republican, had begun to talk to Barnes, a Democrat, about fish.
“I really began to talk myself into an aquarium,” said Marcus, who had often visited aquariums to unwind during his Home Depot travels. “I began to realize how inclusive aquariums are to everyone, rich or poor, black or white. Age means nothing. Little kids love it; older people love it.”
By the time the wheels of the Falcon 900 touched U.S. soil, Marcus had already doodled his initial thoughts on a piece of scrap paper. The Georgia Aquarium was about to take flight.
“I realized early on we were going to do something unique and special,” Marcus said. “I wanted something that would last generations.”
The final product is the work of many people, but Marcus’ imprint can be seen all over it. The aquarium’s one-of-a-kind “Learning Loop” came about because Marcus was nearly trampled by unruly schoolchildren at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium dedicates 25 percent of its space to a separate educational path through the facility that will be seen only by the 70,000 students and their teachers expected to visit annually.
Look down while you’re walking through the galleries and you’ll see another Marcus innovation. Most public aquariums have concrete floors. Marcus carpeted the floors of key galleries.
“I was thinking about people my age,” he said. “I wanted to make the floors more conducive for a longer experience.”
From the beginning, Marcus tried to minimize government intervention in the project. He set up the aquarium as a nonprofit institution under the Marcus Foundation, an arrangement that would give him maximum control and shield most of its records from public scrutiny. He eventually plans to turn the big fish tank over to a nonprofit board.
“I want to build it, and I don’t want to have to worry about bureaucracy and policy,” Marcus said during an interview while the facility was under construction. “It’s my money, and I want to do what I want to do with it.”
He aggressively tried to cloak the aquarium’s scale and its specific exhibits in secrecy. That approach sprang from his Home Depot days. Marcus had a saying: “Don’t advertise the hammer until the hammer is on the shelf.” His approach to the Georgia Aquarium has been much the same.
Contractors, aquarium employees, academics — everyone who came into contact with the aquarium — were obligated to sign nondisclosure agreements. The whole project was dubbed “the Cone of Silence” by the largely fraternal international aquarium community.
By November 2001, Swanagan — who had pulled the Florida Aquarium in Tampa out of a financial tailspin — was on Marcus’ payroll. The two — sometimes with Marcus’ wife, Billi, in tow — began a frenzied tour of the world’s best aquariums. Over the next 18 months, they visited more than 50 fish tanks in more than a dozen countries.
One eye-popping tour to visit seven Japanese aquariums in six days would have a profound impact on how visitors will experience the Georgia Aquarium. The dual wall tanks of fish, called “blue runners,” that guide visitors into the aquarium’s atrium are based on a small exhibit they saw during that trip.
And it was in Japan that Marcus first looked into the face of the planet’s biggest fish. “When Bernie saw the whale sharks, you knew there was no turning back,” Swanagan recalled.
Some scientists, and even the Japanese, who have kept whale sharks in a few of their aquariums for more than a decade, tried to dissuade Marcus from bringing the world’s largest fish to a landlocked city at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. Their doubts only seemed to encourage the man who had overcome legions of naysayers to build the world’s biggest hardware stores.
“All the experts said, you can’t do it,” Marcus recalled with more than a little glee when the aquarium’s two whale sharks, Ralph and Norton, arrived in Atlanta. “I just love that — when they tell you that you can’t do it.”
Once the decision was made to display whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, much of the remainder of the facility began to fall into place. These massive fish needed a massive habitat, one unlike any fish tank ever constructed.
The result was a 6.2 million-gallon tank that is the focus of the Ocean Voyager gallery — one that visitors will view through one of the biggest aquarium windows on Earth. Made of a special acrylic, the tank’s window is 2 feet thick.
“When I started interviewing aquarium people, they all came to me with the same thing: ‘We’re going to open this nice little aquarium. It’s going to be cute, something similar to Chattanooga.’ I said, ‘You don’t understand what I’m trying to do here. I want something extraordinary,’ ” Marcus recalled.
Gary Fowler, principal designer at the Atlanta-based architectural firm of Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates, said that by the time his firm took over designing the aquarium, the coral tank and the whale shark tank — code-named “Ralph” — were driving the project.
Fowler said he sent Carlson a design for the coral reef exhibit with four options for the critical skylight over what is now known as the Tropical Diver gallery.
“Each design option had a video that traced the sun through that space for the summer and the winter,” Fowler said.
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Marcus, whom Forbes last year listed as No. 106 on their tally of the wealthiest Americans, had outlined early on what he was willing to spend.
“I sat down with our financial people at one point, and I said, ‘We’re either going to do it or not do it,’ ” Marcus said. “And I picked a number, and I said, ‘The number is going to be $200 million. That’s what I’m going to spend,’ knowing I would spend more. But I had to have a number to start with to have some discipline.”
Fowler said keeping the costs in line became a major challenge.
“They [Marcus and Swanagan] had seen every aquarium in the world, and they would say, ‘I want one of those and I want one of those, and I want one of those,’ ” he said. “You start adding them up and it’s always a challenge to meet budget.”
It became obvious the $200 million figure would be shattered if all five galleries envisioned for the aquarium were to become a reality.
Marcus announced Saturday that before it was over, he had lightened his bank account by $250 million.
“It’s like Billi shopping,” Marcus told about reporters at a media preview Saturday. “There’s no bottom to it.”
Still more money was needed, and Marcus turned to some of Georgia’s marquee companies to complete the aquarium.
“I reached a point where I said, this is it, I’m not spending more than this,” Marcus said. “And the only way to pay for it was to get sponsors to help us finish this thing.”
Home Depot, Georgia-Pacific, Southern Company, AirTran and SunTrust Banks were recruited as “presenting sponsors,” spending an estimated $7.5 million each to sponsor a gallery.
BellSouth stepped up to sponsor the theater and Turner Broadcasting System paid $4 million to sponsor the one-of-a-kind Learning Loop set up for the 70,000 schoolchildren expected to visit each year.
And there were other major infusions of money and services Marcus is not counting in the total cost.
The state agreed to forgo taxes on construction materials. Coca-Cola gave the aquarium the 9-acre construction site. United Parcel Service kicked in a $1 million in-kind contribution to transport creatures like the whale sharks from Taiwan and beluga whales from Mexico.
Improvements to Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard, the roadway connecting the aquarium to the interstate, cost about $13.3 million. The state provided nearly $7 million, the city $1 million, Central Atlanta Progress about $1 million through its self-taxing program. Landowners provided more than $4 million worth of rights of way.
The important thing, Marcus said, is that the aquarium will open debt-free.
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While the aquarium has been widely applauded, there have been some bumps along the road to its opening day.
Some have complained that, unlike other public fish tanks, the Georgia Aquarium does not offer an all-encompassing annual family membership, making it too expensive for large families.
Under the Georgia Aquarium’s price plan, annual passes for a family of four would cost about $205. The much smaller Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga charges $85 for a yearly family membership.
Some homeless advocates took issue with Marcus when he became involved in a high-profile fight for an Atlanta ordinance banning aggressive panhandling in downtown Atlanta, a frequent complaint of tourists visiting the city.
“People are not going to come down here and eat dinner if they are afraid to get in their cars,” Marcus said at the time.
The Atlanta City Council eventually passed the ordinance 12-3 after a raucous meeting at which some homeless advocates shouted down council members.
And a few animal rights groups have opposed the aquarium’s plan to display whale sharks and belugas.
Some groups argue that no wild animals should be on display, while others object specifically to large oceangoing creatures like whale sharks and belugas’ being confined.
Marcus has dismissed most of the criticism with a wave of his hand.
Once the public experiences the aquarium, he said, the complaints will go silent.
“I want people to walk in and be happy when they walk in,” he said. “And I want them to be overjoyed when they walk out.”
National media having feeding frenzy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kathleen Whyman, the 35-year-old deputy editor of Attractions Management magazine, had a list of 31 questions to ask Atlanta philanthropist Bernie Marcus. But by the end of her interview, Whyman had asked only six questions, including: Do you mind if I tape-record this?
“I don’t know that I got anything different than anyone else, to be honest,” Whyman, a British journalist, said after Marcus moved two tables down for an interview with an Atlanta news-talk radio station. “But that’s to be expected from a public relations media day.”
RENEÉ HANNANS HENRY/AJC
Among the dignitaries on hand Saturday (from left): Mayor Shirley Franklin, Robert L. Fornaro of AirTran Airways, Gov. Sonny Perdue, Bernie and Billi Marcus.Whyman was among hundreds of national and international journalists who descended on downtown Atlanta on Saturday to tour the world’s largest aquarium.
The 250 newspaper reporters, freelance photographers, travel and entertainment writers and TV producers were among the first to see the completed $290 million attraction, which was financed in large part by Marcus, the self-made billionaire who co-founded Home Depot.
“We’re getting international exposure, international exposure,” Marcus said as he arrived for what would be the first of dozens of interviews and speeches. “I’ve gotten calls from England. I’ve gotten calls from Germany. We’re doing international press, which is what we want.”
Between filming beluga whales, whale sharks, sting rays and other sea creatures, the journalists sipped wine and listened to speeches by the corporate leaders who helped fund the exhibits, Mayor Shirley Franklin and Gov. Sonny Perdue, who was sporting a Georiga Aquarium logo shirt.
“Bringing the ocean to Atlanta is no small accomplishment,” Perdue said to Marcus. “But you did it.”
Before sampling salmon and caviar, beef tenderloin and other delicacies prepared by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, who is running the aquarium’s catering operation, some journalists sat with him at a strategically placed table by the beluga whale exhibit.
“Everyone asks the same question: Why are you here?” said Puck, noting that he had had interviews with CNN and FOX as well as an Atlanta-based Spanish language TV station. “I think Bernie created something really special.”
Aquarium officials declined to release a list of the media that attended the five-hour event, but many represented area outfits, including the Rockdale Citizen, Where Magazine, a free entertainment guide, and the Georgia Tech alumni magazine, which is doing a feature on aquarium executive director and Tech alumnus Jeff Swanagan.
Much of the worldwide coverage came from CNN, located right down the street.
Swanagan and other aquarium employees manned exhibits ready to answer questions, while public relations executives passed out news releases touting everything from the structure’s “unique exterior profile,” which mimics the bow of a ship, to the “underwater experience” of the gift shop from which visitors exit at ground level.
Creel McCormack, vice president of marketing and communications for the aquarium’s design firm, walked through the ballroom clutching an armful of news releases, CDs with digital images and business cards.
“I’d love to have you talk to Gary,” she said, referring to one of the designers.
One group of reporters sitting around a table in the atrium seemed to grow restless as noon passed and there still was no sign of the promised Puck goodies.
“What I want to know is how big the whale sharks are going to get,” one remarked.
“What I really want to know,” another retorted, “is where’s the ? food?”
Staff writers Patricia Guthrie and Jim Tharpe contributed to this article.
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Event at aquarium to help kids with disabilities
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Long before Bernie Marcus built a giant aquarium, he built a fish bowl of another kind. It’s called the Marcus Institute, and every morning it opens its doors to children, parents, professors, therapists, doctors, social workers and others. Some teach, some learn, some come and gaze through glass at “a miracle in progress.”
Inside this four-story brick building, the struggle of raising a child with a developmental disability plays out on both sides of an observation window. Mothers and fathers anxiously peer out a one-way window, watching as therapists patiently teach their children the tools of everyday life.
The scene can change from glad to sad in a heartbeat.
“When you’re seeing your baby crying and screaming, it’s hard to not want to reach out,” says Tina Doogs, a 37-year-old mother from southern Indiana who traveled to Atlanta this week in hopes of solving her little boy’s eating problems. “But I know it’s for the best.”
Doogs only knows the name Marcus from the challenging and confounding search she and her husband endured to get help for their son. She’s heard something about a new aquarium opening in Georgia, she said, and that a man named Marcus is involved. But Doogs — like most people — didn’t know there was any connection.
That’s about to change.
Sunday, two passions of Home Depot co-founder Marcus will come together at “The Big Splash.” The inaugural event of the Georgia Aquarium (which officially opens to the public Wednesday) is a fund-raiser for the Marcus Institute, its first black-tie benefit since opening in 1991.
More than 2,000 tickets were sold, with sponsors paying anywhere from $2,500 to $400,000. Children’s artwork is to be displayed alongside aquatic wonders.
“Look at that. That’s just beautiful, isn’t it?” Charles Shaffer Jr., institute CEO and president, says as a visitor looks at the drawings and colorful paintings lining the “Marcus Art Gallery,” a simple display in one of the institute’s therapy rooms. “We’ve already had a lot of them framed to give to the biggest sponsors.”
The event was the idea of a group of women who call themselves the FunDraisers. They select one charity every year to help. They picked the Marcus Institute this year.
“Bernie wasn’t so sure at first,” Shaffer says, “but then he agreed they could use the aquarium.”
The institute was created, Shaffer says, when a Home Depot executive assistant told her boss that she’d have to resign or retire because she couldn’t find a day program to care for her child with cerebral palsy.
“Bernie said, ‘Well, that can’t be’ and he got involved.”
What opened 14 years ago in a trailer at Emory University’s Department of Pediatrics is now an 80,000-square-foot horseshoe-shaped building on 18 acres of land on Briarcliff Road. Many of its physicians are on staff at Emory University just down the road.
Last year, after an intensive fund-raising campaign, the institute balanced its $11 million budget for the first time without Marcus having to pull out his checkbook. Raising more money will help the institute serve more families and create outreach services into rural areas that often have dismal services for children with special needs.
About a dozen children from eight counties attend the Marcus Behavior Center School, an all-day educational program for children who suffer severely from mental deficiencies and from injuring themselves. Hundreds of other kids are enrolled in programs specific to other neurological disorders, such as autism. The Marcus Institute is also nationally recognized for its fetal alcohol syndrome research and services to children irrevocably damaged because their mothers abused alcohol or drugs while pregnant.
In Georgia, it’s estimated that more than 404,000 children and teens under 18 have a developmental disability; of those, about 10,000 suffer from autism and 38,000 are affected by prenatal alcohol exposure. Many suffer multiple physical, mental and emotional disorders.
The goal is to teach them social and personal skills so they can attend neighborhood schools, go to restaurants with their families, make their beds.
Time and patience are often the ingredients behind the Marcus motto, “Turning disabilities into possibilities.”
“It took one child 540 lessons to learn how to dress himself,” said Catherine Trapani, director of education. “The staff hung in there. Just being able to do that simple task has changed the whole family. Now, he vacuums, he makes popcorn.”
In seven more weeks, Doogs hopes she’ll have a similar happy ending for her 4-year-old son, Noel. The institute’s pediatrics feeding disorders program, which is eight weeks of intensive therapy, has an 86 percent success rate, the staff says.
For a variety of reasons, some infants and toddlers refuse to accept any kind of food, or they’re so highly selective, they become malnourished.
Doctors theorize little Noel developed sensory issues around his mouth because he needed ventilation tubes after being born premature, his mother said. He’s been fed through a tube inserted in his stomach since age 14 months.
He’s also behind in many developmental skills. Just having learned how to walk, he still doesn’t talk.
But already, his mother sees subtle signs of improvement after only a few days at the institute. “He’s calmer, less agitated and taken a nap at the same time every day three days in a row. He’s never done that.”
Marcus often swings by the institute and checks in on children he’s come to know, the staff says.
He wishes more people understood the need for a place that bears his name.
“It’s time for the community to embrace these children,” he says.
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‘World-class attraction’ spotlights Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bernie will be there. So will the mayor and the governor. And Wolfgang Puck is serving lunch.
The Georgia Aquarium opens its doors to the world’s media today, trying to make a very good first impression on more than 250 media representatives from more than 100 newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television networks.
“We want to show this is a destination for international visitors,” said aquarium spokeswoman Donna Fleishman. “This is a world-class attraction that should be on visitors’ must-see lists when they come to the United States.”
The media tour comes at a critical time in Atlanta’s ongoing effort to reinvent itself.
The world’s largest aquarium, which opens to the public next week, arrives just a month after nearby Atlantic Station’s retail outlets opened and on the heels of a major expansion by the High Museum of Art. The World of Coca-Cola museum opens next door to the aquarium in 2007.
“It’s an incredible moment for the city in many ways,” said Jackson Kelly, president of Brand Atlanta Inc. “This is a defining time for the region. It will create a leisure market for Georgians and visitors like Atlanta has never seen before.”
Brand Atlanta is a public-private marketing initiative that has raised $8 million in cash and in-kind donations to promote the city. Jackson said the aquarium opening, coupled with the other recent venue expansions, represents the biggest boost for downtown since the 1996 Summer Olympics.
That will translate into job creation and will redefine downtown as a major tourist destination, he predicted. “We think the aquarium will help every other attraction in Atlanta,” Jackson said.
Located at the north end of Centennial Olympic Park, the $280 million Georgia Aquarium has been promoting itself to the locals for several months.
The big fish tank has more than 100,000 fish swimming in more than 8 million gallons of water.
It displays everything from sea otters to whale sharks, the biggest fish on the planet. It is the only aquarium outside Asia to display the gentle, plankton-eating sharks, which can grow to the size of a Greyhound bus.
Today’s festivities are aimed at a worldwide audience, and Fleishman said reporters from Japan, Korea, Mexico and Latin America have signed up for the tour.
“Two of our employees will be providing interviews in Spanish for the audiences in Mexico and Latin America,” she said.
Reporters will get a tour of the just-completed 500,000-square-foot facility, listen to speeches by Mayor Shirley Franklin and Gov. Sonny Perdue and have lunch prepared by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, whose company oversees catering for the aquarium’s massive ballroom. Selections from the aquarium’s Cafe Aquaria will also be provided.
The tour kicks off a week of intensive media scrutiny for the aquarium and downtown Atlanta.
On Monday, when the aquarium opens to annual pass-holders, NBC’s “Today” show will broadcast from the big fish tank.
The show reaches about 6 million U.S. viewers every day and up to 11 million viewers overseas. Two days later, when the aquarium opens to general-admission ticket holders, CNN will use live feeds from the festivities.
Fleishman said aquarium officials realize they have a very narrow window to get their message out to a very large audience. This is their 15 minutes of fame.
“The most difficult thing for us is trying to get them to grasp all of this in a limited time frame,” she said. “But this is what we’ve been building up to.”
Fleishman said aquarium benefactor and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus has been inundated with interview requests as the opening nears.
Marcus is spending more than $200 million of his fortune to build the aquarium as a “thank you” to the people of Georgia, where he began his home-improvement empire.
“Bernie call me this morning and said, ‘Where do you need me? Where do you want me?’ He goes from 76 to 6 years old when he starts talking about the aquarium. If everyone else gets as excited as he is, we’ve succeeded,” Fleishman said.
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Aquarium anchors urban area poised to evolve
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shelly Stevens closed her restaurant across Luckie Street from the Georgia Aquarium in 2003 because the lights and water kept shutting off without warning while the aquarium was being built. The effort to keep Dugan’s open next to the fury of a fast-track construction site was just too great.
Stevens’ eatery reopened this week to serve up its famed wings and burgers in a cafe overlooking the aquarium’s parking deck. Stevens has her fingers crossed that her decision to keep paying the lease during the lean times will pay off, although she has no expectations that aquarium visitors will queue up at her door.
“We’re a little place and we serve good food, and we think we’ll cater to [aquarium] employees and the people who live in the lofts in the neighborhood,” Stevens said.
The Georgia Aquarium, which opens to season pass-holders Monday, is expected to bring a few million visitors a year into downtown Atlanta. Bernie Marcus, the aquarium’s benefactor, said one reason he approved a site in a rough part of town was to help lift the distressed urban core by creating jobs and attracting crowds with money to spend.
The neighborhood that visitors will see around the aquarium may not be as polished as Marcus would prefer for his grand opening. There still aren’t many places to eat or shop. Windows on several empty storefronts in the blocks surrounding the aquarium display “For Lease” signs.
The area northwest of the Georgia Aquarium still has the gritty feel of a decayed industrial district that had served as Atlanta’s freight depot since before the Civil War. There are several fenced-off parking lots and a handful of brick buildings with “For Sale” signs tacked on their fronts. One vacant building has a banner reading: “Experience Atlanta’s New Restaurant Row.”
The explosion of shops and restaurants that transformed downtown Chattanooga when the Tennessee Aquarium opened in 1992 hasn’t erupted here. Then again, Chattanooga had a 20-year master plan to leverage its aquarium into an economic catalyst to revitalize its downtown. And now more than 100 stores, bars, restaurants and an Imax theater have infused the neighborhood surrounding that city’s recently expanded fish tank.
Egbert Perry isn’t surprised at what appears to be a sluggish response to open shops and restaurants in hopes of profiting from aquarium visitors. Much of the land that can be developed near the Georgia Aquarium is owned by companies such as his, The Integral Group, that have been planning big projects since long before Marcus announced the downtown site for his aquarium. (The first announced site was at Atlantic Station, in Midtown).
Perry expects to start construction next year on a 200-unit condo building, with retail on the ground floor, on a site overlooking the aquarium.
“The aquarium never intended to be all things to all people,” Perry said. “It will be a huge economic generator. But retail follows [residential] rooftops, and I think the retail will start to be evident in 12 months, when the residential projects are under construction and they include retail on the lower levels.”
The city of Atlanta is in the process of helping developers improve the neighborhood around the aquarium. But money that was initially approved in March has yet to be provided.
Atlanta’s development agency, the Atlanta Development Authority, recommended the city issue up to $40 million in bonds to subsidize construction of new shops, three hotels, an office tower, housing and the new World of Coca-Cola Museum. The Atlanta City Council approved the bond sale in June, but it was delayed and the council changed the deal in September to include additional funds that will support Mayor Shirley Franklin’s effort to help the homeless.
The bond package is following a normal course and is on schedule to be sold by year end, said Greg Giornelli, president of the development authority.
David Marvin’s company, Legacy Property Group, is one of a few developers who hope to capitalize on the Georgia Aquarium. Legacy, which is to receive about $5 million from the city’s bond issue for two hotels and a restaurant-retail center, has been a player downtown since before the Olympic Games, building the Embassy Suites hotel and Centennial Park West condominiums, which overlook the park. Legacy has started renovating an office building into the Glenn Boutique Hotel, at Marietta and Spring streets, and hopes to start next year renovating a building it bought in 1999 with plans to make it a dot.com office tower.
“I think it would be advantageous if all the improvements to be undertaken around the aquarium were open when the aquarium opens, but that just hasn’t proved to be workable,” Marvin said. “I’ve met with Bernie [Marcus] and shared our plans and sought his input and kept his organization apprised about our schedule. I wish we were a better neighbor to the Georgia Aquarium by being open.”
The anchor tenant of Marvin’s planned retail-restaurant center, just across Marietta Street from the aquarium’s parking lot, is Metrotainment Cafe. Marvin said it will be a sports bar hosting remote broadcasts for 790 The Zone sports talk radio. The building’s interior has original brick walls and stone work, and this week Mark Dagostino, Marvin’s property superintendent, was checking out work in the building he remembers as the Carson furniture store.
Dagostino has been renovating buildings along Marietta Street for more than a decade. While the area may not be the entertainment destination for the aquarium spillover crowd that some had hoped, he marvels at the neighborhood’s evolution.
“It used to be terrible,” Dagostino said. “We had to sleep in the buildings to keep the ‘urban outdoorsmen’ from taking the copper pipes. You couldn’t turn your back on your tools or they’d disappear. But with every year that goes by, you see more and more people walking by, even at night. And this area used to be a ghost town.”
Shopkeepers near Centennial Park have high hopes the aquarium visitors will boost their businesses.
“I look forward to it being real busy here because people will be walking around before and after they go to the aquarium, and CNN Center will have too many people,” said Steven Walker, a cook at Just Around the Corner, a hamburger stand at the corner of Spring and Marietta streets. Walker flips burgers and fish in a building that has been just slightly renovated since it served in the 1930s as a Standard Oil gas station.
The owners of Layfield Motors Service have seen lots of change around their business, which opened in 1924 near its current location on Luckie Street, next to Dugan’s. Calvin Watts, a co-owner, said Layfield has outlasted the creation of Centennial Park, which eliminated many businesses that used his repair shop. Watts’ big worry about the Georgia Aquarium is possible traffic congestion, but he is looking at the bright side.
“We’ll probably get a lot of people wanting to get their oil changed so they can get free parking while we work on their car,” Watts quipped.
At Dugan’s, Shelly Stevens is equally amazed at the area’s turn-around in the two years her restaurant was closed. Dugan’s still carries the badges of being a real urban pioneer — razor wire circles the rooftop to thwart burglers and the garbage bin is in a cage to fend off dumpster divers. But Stevens did not want those badges noted.
“It really is dramatically different. Now, when you see people running, they’re jogging, not running away from somebody.”
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FishScales mark marriages, babies and family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rahul Bajaj armed himself with a FishScale when he got ready to take the plunge.
A doctor affiliated with Emory University, Bajaj had been carrying on a long-distance romance with Seema Sood, who lives in New York City. He wanted something permanent to mark his marriage proposal. So Bajaj — and apparently more than a dozen folks with the same idea — decided on a FishScale, the illuminated pieces of immortality at the Georgia Aquarium that patrons purchased for $55 each.
A 100-foot-long wall of the “scales” will greet visitors to the world’s largest fish tank when it opens its doors to annual pass-holders Monday morning.
Bajaj, however, got a head start.
John Spink/AJC
Rahul Bajaj’s proposal is one of 14 on the FishScales wall.On July 22 , the 31-year-old flew to New York, took 24-year-old Sood to the roof of her apartment building overlooking the Empire State Building and gave her two boxes. One contained a book he made of the e-mails the two have traded during their courtship. The last one she opened contained a framed copy of the FishScale that reads: “SS, Will You Marry Me? RB.”
The couple, both the children of Indian immigrants, plan to wed May 6 on Long Island, where they grew up. Bajaj plans to take his bride-to-be to see their real FishScale the next time she comes to Atlanta.
“This is something permanent, something we can come back and see on our 50th wedding anniversary,” he said.
Some 34,441 people purchased FishScales, including 14 that contain marriage proposals, 316 in memory of loved ones and 59 for yet unborn children. Money raised from the scales goes toward the aquarium’s education, conservation and research efforts.
Aquarium officials cut off sales after a few months when demand outstripped supply even though they had only advertised the scales on their Web site.
“We want that wall to be there forever,” said Jeff Swanagan, the aquarium’s executive director. “It was more about connections [with the community] than it was about fund-raising.”
Swanagan personally bought 11 FishScales, including panels for his five children, his parents, his ex-wife, her parents and even his daughter’s boyfriend “just because he’s a good kid.”
The FishScales are a high-tech version of the Olympic bricks that line Centennial Olympic Park. About 460,000 bricks were purchased for $35 each for the 1996 Olympics.
Aquarium benefactor and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus has quipped that the FishScales are like the Olympic bricks “only you can find ‘em.”
Aquarium visitors who want to locate their scale first must type their name into a raised computer screen that faces the FishScale wall. A light moves across the Plexiglas wall until it gets to the area where your scale is located. It then forms a ring of light around your scale.
“It makes a circle around it like a bull’s-eye,” Swanagan said. “It narrows it down to an area of about 10 scales.”
One of the people who bought a scale will not be there to share it with his daughter. Jack R. Snook, a 24-year-old U.S. Marine who had returned from heavy combat in Iraq, bought a FishScale on March 10 for his 7-year-old daughter, Mallory.
A month later, Snook was shot dead in downtown Atlanta in what police described as a case of road rage.
“He loved fish and was very interested in carrying Mallory to the aquarium when it opened,” said his mother, Pat Snook, who lives in Cumming. “Now, we will do it for her. She needs to see it.”
An Atlanta nonprofit last month sued the aquarium over the FishScale program. The Center for Transportation and the Environment Inc. said it came up with the FishScale idea and has accused the aquarium of copyright infringement.
Aquarium spokeswoman Donna Fleishman said the lawsuit is “completely without merit” and will have no impact on the aquarium’s opening or visitor’s access to the FishScale wall.
Corporate sponsors ride in the front seat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some public fish tanks — like the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California — mute their corporate sponsorships.
But others shout out their affiliations. Baltimore’s National Aquarium next month unveils its “Animal Planet Australia: Wild Extremes” exhibit, sponsored by — you guessed it — the Animal Planet television network.
John Spink/AJC
SunTrust Banks and Georgia-Pacific are two Atlanta companies that ponied up sponsorship.The Georgia Aquarium, which opens its doors to annual pass-holders in three days, doesn’t name its exhibits after businesses. But it does display “presenting sponsors” names in bold, can’t-miss lettering next to the gallery names. Glance up at the Ocean Voyager Gallery entrance and you’ll see the words Home Depot just below. The words AirTran Airways peek prominently from beneath the Tropical Diver gallery logo.
The exhibit sponsors paid big bucks for the plugs — an estimated $7.5 million each for the five galleries and the theater, though none of the sponsors nor aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus would confirm that figure. Sponsorship of the one-of-a-kind learning loop for schoolkids reportedly cost Turner Broadcasting System about $4 million.
Two things are certain, however. The world-class aquarium — the biggest on the planet — got millions beyond the $200 or so million Marcus is sinking into the project from his own bank account. The aquarium’s final price tag could reach $280 million once the corporate sponsorship is added.
The companies, for their part, get some priceless goodwill in the deal. Think of Georgia-Pacific in the future and you just might remember a very good time in the Cold Water Quest gallery watching the beluga whales and sea otters.
“It’s a combination of a business deal, a marketing deal, an advertising deal and something that will have a great effect on this city and state,” Marcus said when he announced the presenting sponsors. “These are great companies that represent the best in this state, and they will represent the best in this aquarium.”
Marcus noted that without the corporate sponsors, the aquarium likely would have to open with four instead of five galleries.
Sheila Weidman, Georgia-Pacific’s vice president of corporate communications and marketing, said her company believes its Cold Water Quest gallery is a way to connect with families “in a more unique and personal way.”
“What we have been focusing on for a couple of years is how to more effectively use our marketing dollars,” Weidman said. “As the 30-second advertising spot on television becomes less effective, we are really working on how do we use our marketing dollars to support venues like the aquarium where families share special experiences together.”
The aquarium’s mascot — a cartoonish version of a reddish-orange Garibaldi fish — is named “Deepo” in tribute to Marcus, who co-founded Home Depot in the late 1970s. The 76-year-old billionaire is spending a major chunk of his home improvement fortune to underwrite construction of the aquarium, which will open debt-free.
William Chipps, senior editor of IEG Sponsorship Report, said many companies see plenty of value in linking their names to attractions like zoos and aquariums.
The high-profile entertainment venues, he noted, draw massive numbers of visitors, making them prime vehicles for marketing.
A backlash is possible, he said, though it seems unlikely in the modern, ad-steeped world.
“Nowadays, I’d like to think that most consumers are aware of corporate sponsorships and aren’t as offended as they might have been five or 10 years ago,” said Chipps, whose publication is based in Chicago. “Without corporate support, some of these organizations may not be able to exist.”
Jane Ballentine, spokeswoman for the Maryland-based American Zoo and Aquarium Association, said corporate sponsorships no longer inspire charges of overt commercialism of public spaces.
“It’s become so commonplace that it really doesn’t even make a ripple anymore,” she said.
For most corporations, Ballentine said, aquarium sponsorship is a no-brainer.
“They have their name on something that is high profile and it also says, ‘We’re part of this community, and we want to show our appreciation and thank our customers.’ It’s very good community relations.”
There are, however, aquariums that shy away from connecting a public institution with corporate logos. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which got most of its funding from the Packard family (as in Hewlett-Packard), downplays corporate affiliations at its fish tank, said Monterey spokesman Ken Peterson.
“From the very beginning, we’ve wanted this institution and the exhibits to stand on their own,” Peterson said. “For the businesses supporting us, we wanted them to be supporting the our mission instead of looking for specific recognition on the floor.”
The Monterey fish tank does recognize corporate sponsors in printed materials it distributes. Recently the aquarium hosted a weekend aimed at Hispanic visitors called “Fiesta Del Mar,” which was co-sponsored by Pacific Gas and Electric. The company got logo recognition on printed materials and in press materials, and the donation was recognized in comments from the podium, Peterson said.
However, inside the aquarium, it’s difficult to locate a donor’s name, he said.
“It’s a philosophical approach,” Peterson said. “We have chosen not to put that level of commercialization on the floor.”
Staff writer Scott Leith contributed to this article.
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Aquarium hopes to breed whale sharks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Aquarium officials say they want to breed whale sharks — the biggest fish on earth — at the Atlanta fish tank, a never-attempted feat that would push the bounds of known aquatic science.
The world’s largest aquarium, which opens its doors to the public next week, has two juvenile male whale sharks now swimming in a 6.2 million-gallon tank. Officials want to get at least one female for a possible breeding program.
John Spink/AJC
Ralph (or is that Norton?) may one day become the proud papa to 300 whale shark pups.“I would love to breed the whale sharks because very little is known about these animals,” said Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who is funding most of the aquarium’s $280 million construction cost. “The more that we proliferate the species the better. You learn about these animals, and you can save the species by reproducing them.”
Aquarium Executive Director Jeff Swanagan said the Ocean Voyager tank was designed with the capacity to hold four to six whale sharks, which can grow to the size of a school bus. He said there are no immediate plans to bring more whale sharks to Atlanta, but confirmed the facility would like to acquire a female.
“This is a long-term venture, and that’s why we had to design this exhibit so large,” Swanagan said. “This isn’t going to happen quickly. It will happen over years and years of research on these animals.”
Said Marcus: “Whether or not we get another whale shark, I can’t tell you. But if we can, we probably will.”
Shark scientist Robert Hueter, who is studying whale sharks off the Yucatan Peninsula, said he thinks breeding whale sharks in captivity is feasible.
“It’s all doable, but it would take a major effort to sort all of the issues out,” Hueter said.
Hueter, who directs the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., said other types of sharks have been bred in captivity. Any breeding program in Atlanta could be years off, he said, because the Georgia Aquarium’s two whale sharks, Ralph and Norton, are still sexually immature.
“I can’t imagine they would be ready for mating any sooner than three years, and it could be longer than that,” Hueter said.
Scientists think male whale sharks do not reach sexual maturity until they are about 27 feet long, Hueter said. Ralph and Norton are growing, but measure less than 20 feet.
Atlanta aquarium officials initially thought they had a male-female pair, which they first dubbed “Ralph and Alice” after the characters in the old TV sitcom, “The Honeymooners.”
Ray Davis, the aquarium’s vice president for zoological operations, said when the big fish were first captured in Taiwan an initial exam confirmed Ralph was a male. The other whale shark appeared to be female — males are identified by so-called “claspers” on their underside, organs that are difficult to detect in immature animals.
“They called me [from Taiwan] and said, ‘Hey, we have Alice,’” Davis recalled. “I said, ‘Are you sure? And they said, ‘Absolutely.’ So I asked them to go back and get me photographic proof.”
A close examination of the photos revealed the truth, Davis recalled.
“It was very hard to discern, but you could see it on the photograph. Alice was really Norton.”
Very little is known about whale sharks in general and almost nothing is known about their courtship and breeding behavior, Hueter said. The gentle plankton-eaters, which can grow to more than 40 feet, are found in most of the world’s warm-water oceans.
They are considered a threatened species because they are killed for food in some countries. But no one knows how many exist or how the populations around the globe are related.
A pregnant female killed by Taiwan fishermen has provided a few hints about the creature’s reproduction, Hueter said. That huge fish had 300 immature “pups” inside, he said. The Georgia Aquarium’s two whale sharks were purchased from a Taiwan fishery where they too were destined for the dinner table.
Many varieties of sharks have been bred in captivity, Hueter said, including sandbar sharks, bonnethead sharks, bamboo sharks, sawfish and rays. Sawfish and rays are closely related to sharks.
Swanagan said scientists have no idea whether a whale shark program would involve natural breeding or artificial insemination.
“All of this would be new ground,” he said. “The body of knowledge [obtained], even if we are not successful, can be shared with field scientists as they try to figure out how to manage this animal in the wild.”
Swanagan said aquarium scientists have already “explored” what they would do if a female whale shark gave birth to a large number of pups in captivity. They would release the young sharks into the wild at some point, he said, but that would require the clearance of numerous government agencies and a complex plan to raise the whale shark pups to release size in offshore pens.
The pups are only about 18 inches at birth, Swanagan said, and scientists would have to create a “head start program” to get them ready for release.
“You want to improve their chances of survival,” he said. “You wouldn’t just want to throw them back in.”
Well-fed fish don’t munch on tank mates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nobody likes seafood better than, well, seafood — a fact of life in the aquatic food chain that has not been lost on the folks who oversee the soon-to-open Georgia Aquarium.
John Spink/AJC
Is that a look of satisfaction on this grouper’s face? It’s not telling, but chances are it’s not eyeing its neighbors for its next meal.So, gulp, how does the world’s largest aquarium — with 100,000 aquatic creatures representing 500 species — keep its small fry from becoming fast food for the bigger ones?
“We feed ‘em ” says Georgia Aquarium spokesman Dave Santucci.
For decades, in fact, public aquariums throughout the country have been serving up more fish — to their fish — than a sushi bar.
These days the menu for a typical five-star aquarium includes salmon steaks, frozen mackerel, chopped squid, brine shrimp and plankton. And, of course, tons of commercial fish chow — pelletized, gelatinized, flaked, ground and pureed and laced with essential vitamins and minerals.
Unlike gluttonous landlubbers, fish tend to stop eating once they’re full — a trait that aquarium operators have learned to use to their advantage. Good for the smaller fish. And good for the customers.
If the fish are fat and happy, visitors get to see an uncharacteristically peaceable kingdom where the eating of one’s tank mates is the furthest thing from a fish’s mind.
“It takes a tremendous amount of energy for a predator to hunt down its prey and kill it,” says Ken Ramirez, vice president of collections at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
“By keeping everyone well fed, we reduce the incentive for them to chase down and eat other fish in the tank,” he says. “The only time we tend to have problems is when we introduce new fish into the tank that haven’t learned they don’t need to hunt anymore.”
Three squares a day, of course, isn’t the only strategy. Big tanks enable small, fast fish to do what they do best in the wild — flee. And the carefully constructed hidey holes of rock and coral allow small, slow ones to hide.
Occasionally, of course, fish will just be fish. Instinctive behavior that worked in the open ocean is sometimes more compelling than fish chow.
Only last year, for instance, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California proudly put a rare great white shark — accidentally caught by a halibut fisherman off the coast — on display in its three-story Outer Bay tank. Attendance at the aquarium shot up 30 percent and for a while, things went swimmingly.
Then, in February, the 6-foot great white — despite steady feedings of vitamin-enriched salmon and albacore tuna — attacked and killed a smaller soup fin shark in the tank.
In ensuing weeks, it attacked another and began chasing other sharks — a pattern that prompted aquarium officials to decide that the shark — and its instincts — were better suited for the open sea. They released it back into the Pacific Ocean.
“At some level, you have to accept that most fish are predatory creatures,” says aquarium curator Mark Faulkner. “And most aquariums don’t want to lose the fish in their exhibits.”
“It’s not common, but it happens,” says Jackson Andrews, director of operations for the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. “Sometimes, after introducing a school of fish into a tank, we’ll see that after awhile there are fewer of them.”
But Andrews says sharks, despite their malevolent popular image, are often the model residents of community tanks.
“We had to pull some angelfish out of a tank once because they were just pecking the dickens out of the sting rays,” he says. “And people who work in our tanks have taken to wearing hoods because the triggerfish have a tendency to swim up and nibble on an earlobe.”
But aquarium managers also recognize that fish sometimes need to dine the old-fashioned way. “We sometimes feed live fish to our dolphins and some other species,” says the Shedd’s Ramirez.
“But we would never do that out in front of the public. We think our guests would just have too much difficulty with it.”
Injured beluga on the mend, rebounding from stress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Visitors to the Georgia Aquarium will soon see more than 100,000 fish and other animals in the world’s largest aquarium.
They will also see one very large patient, who just happens to be a mammal.
Gasper, the beluga whale rescued from abhorrent conditions at a Mexico City amusement park, is now recovering in an 800,000-gallon tank in the Cold Water Quest exhibit.
Gasper and Nico, both males, were brought to the aquarium Oct. 17. Nico was healthy, but Gasper suffered from two large, infected bite marks (courtesy of Nico) and several grapefruit-sized lesions on his white skin.
John Spink/AJC
Gasper the friendly beluga is feeling better these days.Tim Binder, director of husbandry for the Georgia Aquarium, said the Mexico City belugas were stressed from water conditions and the location of their tank. It was situated near a rollercoaster, a tough spot for animals that are sensitive to sound.
“The new owners of the park realized the circumstances, and knew they had to get them out of there,” Binder said.
Aquarium officials say workers at the Mexico City amusement park were doing the best they could for the animals under very bad circumstances. There was considerable stress on the animals, Binder said, and it is very likely Gasper would not have survived had he not been relocated to Atlanta.
Nico and Gasper now share an 800,000-gallon tank at the Georgia Aquarium with three female belugas on a “breeding loan” from the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. Aquarium officials hope baby belugas will be on the way in the next few years.
“The girls have already warmed up to the boys,” said Jeff Swanagan, the aquarium’s executive director. “they’re already forming friendships and maybe a litte more than that.”
Howard Krum, head of veterinary services and conservation medicine at the Georgia Aquarium, said personnel from Atlanta began treating Gasper with antibiotics a month before he left Mexico and have stepped up treatment since his arrival.
“He (Gasper) was unresponsive in his tank in Mexico City,” Krum said. “He didn’t look at people. He was laying like a log at the bottom of his tank.”
Since Gasper’s arrival, Georgia Aquarium officials have done blood work, biopsies and cultures to direct his final phase of treatment.
Both Krum and Binder said the treatment program appears to be working. Gasper has gained about 150 pounds since his arrival, his wounds are healing and he is very active in his tank.
“It’s difficult to speculate on a long-term prognosis,” Binder said. “But so far, we’re encouraged by what we have seen.”
Job second nature to aquarium’s new chief
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It might have been the sight of a cow udder — not a fish — that eventually landed Jeff Swanagan at the helm of the world’s largest aquarium.
Swanagan, executive director of the soon-to-open Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta, grew up on a 30-acre Ohio farm near the banks of Lake Erie, where he spent leisurely hours exploring the countryside with his dog. When he was 11, he went to work on a neighboring dairy farm.
“My first job was the worst job I’ll ever, ever have,” he said. “I had to shave the udders of milk cows. I’m like 11 years old and thinking, ‘I’m going to get my head kicked in.’ I said to myself, ‘There’s got to be better work than this.’ “
John Spink/AJC
Jeff Swanagan is credited with the financial turnaround of the Florida Aquarium in Tampa.Four decades and a couple of science degrees later, the 48-year-old former farm boy is about to open the doors to the planet’s biggest fish tank amid some major-league hoopla. Media from around the globe plan to cover the event — NBC’s “Today Show” will broadcast from the aquarium Nov. 21, the first day it opens to annual pass-holders.
Swanagan was handpicked four years ago by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who is spending more than $200 million of his home-improvement fortune to build the aquarium. Swanagan, who was paid $278,000 in 2004, will oversee a staff of 220 full-time employees, 120 part-time workers and hundreds of volunteers.
Neither Marcus nor Swanagan will talk about specific budget figures, but based on aquariums of similar size, it could take more than $40 million a year to run the facility, which is set up as a nonprofit. Thanks to Marcus and several major corporations that have sponsored exhibits, the facility will open debt-free. Money from ticket sales, ballroom rentals and retail sales will be used to cover its operating costs.
It is a high-profile job for a guy who grew up in Footville, Ohio, and likes to spend his spare time reading novels by Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind.
“I’m a science-fiction geek. I’ve read every book they’ve ever written,” he said. “I’m so disappointed they can’t write these books faster. I reread their old books before the next one comes out.”
He freely admits his discomfort with schmoozing, even though he is about to get an overdose.
“You play the role of director and you’re always on,” he said. “You can’t go anywhere where you are not the director of the aquarium. I’m very comfortable playing that role. But as just Jeff, I’m a very quiet, shy person. If someone invites me to a party, oh my gosh, I’m a wallflower. I can’t stand it.”
The divorced father of five rarely watches television in his high-rise downtown Atlanta condo overlooking the aquarium, but when he does, he gravitates toward animal documentaries.
“I just love ‘Shark Week,’ ” he said, alluding to the popular show on the Discovery Channel.
Swanagan’s first encounter with the Georgia Aquarium came when he was still director of the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, where he had been since 1998. Before that, he had worked at Zoo Atlanta from 1987 until 1998, beginning as director of education and later serving as deputy zoo director under longtime head Terry Maple.
He was widely credited in the industry with rescuing the Florida fish tank from financial ruin.
lze Berzins, the Florida Aquarium’s vice president of biological operations, said Swanagan took over the facility when it was running deeply in the red. He put it on sound footing, and it has continued to operate in the black after his departure.
Staffers credit Swanagan with reconnecting the aquarium with the community, and reaching out to children and seniors. He was instrumental in expanding the “Explore a Shore” exhibit, which still draws throngs of children to the aquarium.
“We’ve now become one of the success stories, and a lot of that was because of Jeff’s input,” Berzins said. “He was a calming force that got everybody back on track to be supportive of this institution.”
Swanagan downplays his role in the Tampa turnaround, but it burnished his reputation in the business and brought him to the attention of Marcus.
“I looked at it and figured that I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to make it worse,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is my opportunity.’ “
When Marcus and Swanagan first met for lunch in April 2000, Swanagan had no idea who Marcus was. He soon found out that the outgoing billionaire was intent on using a sizable chunk of his bank account to build an aquarium like no other. And he wanted to pick Swanagan’s brain.
“I really didn’t think he was all that serious about it at first,” Swanagan said. “He would just sit there and take in everything I said. I told him initially about everything I knew about how aquariums were designed wrong.”
By November 2001, Swanagan was on Marcus’ payroll, and the two began a no-ideas-barred quest to do it right. They started with a frenzied tour of the world’s best aquariums, visiting more than 50 fish tanks in more than a dozen countries over the next 18 months.
The two men seem like studies in contrast. The gregarious Marcus thrives in the spotlight — he has never met a room full of people he didn’t like. Give him a microphone and you’ll get a 10-minute speech sprinkled with a half-dozen jokes. Swanagan appears happiest offstage, smiling supportively in the shadows.
“There’s been a lot of skill sets we’ve learned together,” said the 76-year-old Marcus. “He’s taught me a lot about the fish world. And I think I’ve given him some of my business acumen. Together, we’ve had a pretty good partnership. I think he’s the guy who can carry this aquarium to the next level.”
In Japan, they visited seven aquariums in six days, an experience that would have a profound impact on the Georgia Aquarium’s final form. Dual wall tanks of blue runners that guide visitors into the aquarium’s atrium are based on a small exhibit they saw on the trip. And it was in Japan where Marcus first looked into the face of the planet’s biggest fish.
“When Bernie saw the whale sharks, you could just see it in him,” Swanagan said. “You knew there was no turning back.”
Eventually, the aquarium was designed around the 6.2 million-gallon tank that is home to Ralph and Norton, the two whale sharks from Taiwan that are the icons of the Georgia Aquarium. It is the only aquarium outside Asia to display the gentle giants, which can grow to the size of a boxcar.
Swanagan’s current job duties include everything from motivating staff to dealing with federal agencies. On weekends, he often straps on scuba gear and dives into the aquarium’s tanks to help clean their massive acrylic windows with a cotton diaper.
“I’m more of a generalist,” he said of his management style. “I find it very motivating to have a diversity of things come across my desk. I’m not heavily detail-oriented, so I surround myself with people who are.”
On a recent morning, Swanagan was scurrying around the 500,000-square-foot facility as it prepared to open. One minute he was checking on three just-arrived beluga whales, the next he was chatting with a technician in the atrium about an audiovisual display.
Swanagan, however, paused — almost reverently — in front of a small, understated tank just beyond the massive, eye-popping coral exhibit. The so-called “jewel tank” contained three multicolored mandarin fish, which only grow to about 4 inches. It is, he admitted, his favorite exhibit. When the aquarium opens, he will wear a mandarin fish likeness on his name tag, hoping visitors will ask him about the creature.
“I went nuts when I saw these things,” he said. “I wanted to scream and hug the staff.”
A science teacher by training — he has taught at Mercer University and evening schools in Fayette County, and high school in Columbus, Ohio — Swanagan said his greatest joy still comes from imparting knowledge.
“When I can take someone who isn’t familiar with our industry and get them excited and give them the ‘wow’ moment, and have them say, ‘I didn’t know that. I want to learn more,’ that’s my big reward — every day when I can give that gift.”
Aquarium block named for Coke inventor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Who was John S. Pemberton? If Coca-Cola has its way, Atlantans soon will be able to answer that question without hesitation.
On May 8, 1886, Pemberton — a pharmacist at Jacob’s Pharmacy at Five Points — mixed the original formula for a Coke.
But Pemberton did not live to see the success of his invention. He sold an average of nine Cokes a day. Plagued with financial and medical problems, Pemberton sold the rights to the formula in 1887, and he died the following year.
As a way to recognize Pemberton’s contribution to Coca-Cola, CEO Neville Isdell on Wednesday declared that the 20-acre site that will include the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coke be named Pemberton Place.
The naming of the block also helps reinforce the recent contribution the company has made to downtown. Coca-Cola donated 9 acres to the Georgia Aquarium.
“We just thought it was appropriate to go back to what, for us, was day one,” Isdell said. “What we are trying to do at the new World of Coke is modernize and leverage off our heritage.”
Georgia Aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus, who started his career as a pharmacist, credited Coca-Cola for helping make the aquarium a reality. The aquarium will open in a couple of weeks, and the new World of Coke is now scheduled to be finished by May 2007.
Fish cookies raise dough for aquarium
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Buckhead Life Restaurant Group plans to sell a specialty line of big fish-shaped cookies Nov. 14-23 to raise money for the Georgia Aquarium’s education fund.
Stacie Hanna, director of marketing for the restaurant group, said the 4” to 8” cookies will be sold for $3.50 to $4.50 each, with about 25 percent of proceeds going to the aquarium.
“We’re doing it to generate excitement among our customers and to let people know we’re part of the aquarium.” The Buckhead Life group is partners at the aquarium’s Cafe Aquaria.
The multicolored cookies will be sold at Buckhead Bread Co. at 3070 Piedmont Road and possibly at the Atlanta Fish Market, Hanna said.
The cookies aren’t meant to literally represent creatures at the world’s largest fish tank, she said. “They’re more in the aquatic spirit of things,” she said.
Anyone wishing to order the treats can call 404-240-1978.
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Beluga girls arrive
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Marina, Natasha and Maris, three female beluga whales, arrived safely at the Georgia Aquarium early Monday from New York.
The three beluga whales are on a breeding loan from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium. They will join Nico and Gasper — both males — who came from a Mexico City amusement park outdoor exhibit. In their new home at the Georgia Aquarium, the belugas will share an 800,000 gallon state-of-the-art habitat designed to simulate their natural environment.
Two United Parcel Service cargo jets flew the three female belugas to Atlanta. UPS donated the service to the Georgia Aquarium. Previously, UPS had flown the Mexico City beluga whales and Ralph and Norton, the Aquarium’s two whale sharks, from Taiwan. Ralph and Norton are in a 6.2-million gallon tank.
“We hope they enjoy the company of the boys from Mexico City and we soon have baby beluga whales,” said aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus.
More than 45,000 people had purchased annual passes to the aquarium as of Monday. Tickets are on sale at the aquarium’s Web site (georgiaaquarium.org).
Marcus to give up reins of aquarium after a year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Aquarium benefactor Bernie Marcus said he will turn his $200-million-plus fish tank over to a nonprofit board of directors about a year after it opens.
Marcus said he plans to leave “an efficient working machine that’s going to be operating properly to a board and say, ‘Here now, it’s your responsibility. Now you take care of it.’Â ”
Marcus, who co-founded Home Depot in Atlanta, has said he is building the 500,000-square-foot facility as a gift to the people of Georgia, whom he credits for the early success of his business. Marcus is providing most of the aquarium’s construction cost, with a little help from several major Atlanta-based corporations.
Cost estimates on the aquarium run as high as $280 million, though Marcus has refused to speculate on a final tab.
There had been some speculation that Marcus might eventually turn over the aquarium to the city of Atlanta or possibly the state.
“It is absolutely not going to the city or state,” Marcus said. “It’s a nonprofit organization that’s been set up already. It already has a board of advisers that will turn into a board of directors. They’re going to run it the same way you run any nonprofit.”
The 76-year-old mogul said his wife, Billi, and “some members of the Marcus Foundation” likely will serve on the board that eventually runs the ship-shaped facility. During the construction phase, the aquarium, which opens Nov. 23, has been run as a tax-exempt nonprofit — technically known as a 501(c) 3 — set up under the auspices of the Marcus Foundation.
Many public aquariums have struggled because they began life saddled with huge construction debt. In some cases, revenues failed to meet expectations and they had to be bailed out by local and state governments.
“Many aquariums essentially open with a mortgage, and that’s a huge disadvantage,” said Ken Peterson, spokesman for the world-class Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Those fish tanks have to cover not only their operating cost, but payments of their debt.
The Monterey aquarium, which was built by David and Lucile Packard (of the Hewlett-Packard fortune) and opened debt-free in 1984, is operated like the Georgia Aquarium, as a nonprofit.
Peterson said the major disadvantage of a nonprofit is that you don’t get any government subsidies.
But the arrangement has many benefits, he said.
“Contributions by outside individuals are tax-deductive, so it’s an incentive for people to donate,” he said. “And you have full control of your own operations. You’re not subject to anybody else’s rules.”
Prior to the Georgia Aquarium’s opening, Marcus has essentially called all the shots. The aquarium already has an audit committee and a human resources committee, but it’s not a democracy.
“It’s just that now I’m making all the decisions, and they’re not,” Marcus said. It is that arrangement that permitted Marcus to keep many details of his big fish tank under wraps. He made contractors, university officials and even corporate bigwigs sign “non-disclosure agreements” to keep their lips sealed. Marcus said his primary goal is to turn over a debt-free facility that is generating enough revenue to cover its operating costs.
Public aquariums are notoriously expensive to operate. Two of the nation’s biggest, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and the Monterey Aquarium, have annual budgets of about $40 million each.
Georgia Aquarium officials have said they will not know what their operating budget is until they have been in operation a year.
Marcus said he thinks operating costs will be covered by “money they make on the gate and the social events at the aquarium.” The aquarium rents its massive ballroom for social functions.
Marcus dismissed any notion that city or state money might be needed to cover operating costs in the future.
“I hope that never happens,” he said.
Fun-loving otters eat often and well
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Officials report Oz and Gracie, the Georgia Aquarium’s two sea otters, are settling in to their new digs and have a serious case of the munchies.
The two hairy (up to a million hairs per square inch) attractions arrived at the aquarium last week and are part of the Cold Water Quest gallery.
Sea otters ravenously consume food. They have high metabolisms and eat the equivalent of 25 percent of their body weight every day.
Oz, who came from the Oregon Zoo, has been downing pounds of “restaurant quality” scallops and shrimp along with his newfound friend, Gracie, who came from California’s Aquarium of the Pacific.
Ad campaign a jaw-dropping experience
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What can leave the “mouth of the South” Ted Turner speechless? Why the Georgia Aquarium, of course.
Running with the idea that the big fish tank is a jaw-dropping experience, the first of two 30-second TV ads promoting the aquarium — set to run the day before opening later this month — will feature Turner and others in different Atlanta locations with mouths agape and a look of frozen bewilderment on their faces. A voiceover tells viewers that the world’s largest aquarium will leave them speechless.
The campaign, by Atlanta-based Grey Worldwide Atlanta, is designed to create a sense of anticipation and wonder for the tourist attraction, says Sam Hosokawa, a Grey vice president. As the characters — including Atlanta icon Baton Bob and the staff at the Varsity — stand frozen, those not in the know move around them trying to figure out what has captured their attention.
The spots end with shots of a lone visitor standing in front of one of the giant tanks.
“We really think this campaign has a lot of legs and we can continue it for a while,” Hosokawa said.
Hosokowa would not disclose how much the campaign, which is receiving some pro bono help, is costing.
In addition to the TV spots, the campaign will include billboards and radio ads that are already running to promote the opening and season tickets.
The spots are targeted for southeastern cities within a three- to six-hour drive to Atlanta, the demographic most likely to initially frequent the aquarium, Hosokawa said. Organizers are hoping that news stories will promote the aquarium nationally, but may buy ads in areas outside the southeast after six months if budgets allow.
Aquarium designs ‘learning loop’ for kids-only
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It began as a Close Encounter of the Kids-Gone-Wild Kind. It led to the most unique feature of the world’s largest aquarium.
When it opens in a few weeks, the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta will have a one-of-a-kind “learning loop” for students and teachers, a winding educational path isolated from the big fish tank seen by regular aquarium visitors.
The educational loop, which is expected to attract 70,000 students a year, traces its inspiration to a field trip that Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus took to one of the nation’s premier aquariums a few years back.
Ben Gray/AJC
Artificial coral occupies a ledge.• MORE EXHIBIT PHOTOS
Marcus, who is spending more than $200 million of his fortune to build Georgia’s big fish tank, declined to say where the incident occurred, but it left a lasting impression.
“Kids were running all over the place,” said Marcus, 76. “I was almost knocked over by a group of four kids that came running through. I said [to an aquarium official], ‘My God. What was that?’ And he said, ‘The school buses let them out and they just run wild.’ “
Marcus asked how the aquarium dealt with the chaos. The official, according to Marcus, replied, “We just hope they don’t get lost and we can get them back on the bus at the end of the day.”
“There was no discipline, no formal training program,” Marcus said. “And I came back and said, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ “
Many meetings and many millions of dollars later, the Georgia Aquarium is getting ready to show off its unique educational facility, which is sponsored by Turner Broadcasting System. It’s an entirely separate journey through the facility’s galleries, complete with touch tanks, research facilities and classrooms. It has its own separate entrance and even a school lunchroom.
“We’ve developed an aquarium within an aquarium,” explained Brian Davis, director of educational services for the Georgia Aquarium.
Located at the northern end of Centennial Olympic Park, the 500,000-square-foot aquarium will open its doors to annual pass-holders Nov. 21; visitors with general admission tickets can get in two days later.
The education loop, on the second floor of the aquarium, will not open to students until after the first of the year. This week, educators began signing up their classes for the loop.
The learning loop takes up about 25 percent of the aquarium’s total floor space and will likely add 10 percent to its cost.
“It’s expensive,” Marcus said. “But I just couldn’t see how you could have a really good program for kids unless you separated the educational component from the entertainment venue.”
The loop has four classrooms and four curriculums, from pre-k through 12th grade. The youngest children are instructed by “Deepo,” the aquarium’s cartoonish fish mascot. Students in grades nine through 12 can learn about such subjects as animal husbandry and aquatic engineering while talking directly to scientists.
The loop is a combination of high-tech and low-tech. In one area, there’s a full-scale (16-foot-long) wall-mounted replica of a baby Northern right whale. In another, a classroom of students can board a massive scale to see how their combined weight compares with that of a whale shark. One “game” has students deposit various pollutants into a miniature stream and then view the simulated impact via a 50-inch computer-connected plasma TV.
Unlike regular aquarium visitors, students also will get to see the coral exhibit’s complex filtration system, mangrove swamp and massive overhead lights that help maintain the circadian rhythms of the exhibit’s animals. The lunchroom has screens that drop from the ceiling to project aquatic images while the students eat.
“It’s a total-immersion learning experience,” said Davis, the aquarium educational director.
Davis, who is finishing his doctorate in secondary science education at Georgia State University, said aquarium officials had to invent most of the education loop from scratch, with input from teachers and educators.
The aquarium classes are designed for student groups of 30 to 100.
“We wanted to deal with much smaller groups and make sure they take away the information we have provided for them,” Davis said. “Every group will be guided by trained staffers. There are no free-range groups in here.”
The aquarium also worked with Atlanta-area schools and colleges on the loop.
Kennesaw Mountain High School developed the software for a watershed interactive game and a river game on the loop. High school students at Lovett School worked with an exhibit development for one of the classrooms and will conduct a research project on one of the exhibits.
Georgia State University students provided some of the behavioral research that will be used in the loop’s classroom’s, and Clark Atlanta University students will assist with some of the classes on water quality and water-quality testing.
Curriculum details
School groups have a choice of two time slots. The morning session is offered 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and the afternoon session is from 1:30 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. Programs are $9.50 per child. Reservations and appointments can be made by visiting www.georgiaaquarium.org or by calling 404-581-4000.
Programs have been created for students based on their age and school level. Here are examples of what the school groups will experience:
Deepo Detectives (Grades PreK – 5): This program takes students through an underwater mystery. The Georgia Aquarium’s mascot, helps students crack the case. This program integrates current technology with traditional story telling and allows students to direct the course of the program based on their conclusions.
Aquatic Adventures (Grades K – 8): A guided adventure through three galleries on the learning loop. Students will explore freshwater and marine environments. They will rotate among the Freshwater, Coral Reef, and Research Galleries. The Freshwater Gallery will focus on the river ecosystem and its inhabitants. The Coral Reef Gallery explores the reef as a living organism. The Research Gallery presents current research topics in an interactive way.
Eco-Explorers (Grades 3 – 8): Provides an in-depth look into various parts of the aquatic world. Students will participate in hands-on activities that introduce them to the concept of scientific inquiry, allowing them to interact with animals and collect data for analysis.
Sea.S.I. (Grades 9 – 12): The Sea.S.I. Program is an investigation into how the nation’s largest aquarium operates. The program will begin with a brief overview of the Georgia Aquarium followed by two detailed lessons. Teachers will have the option to choose from the following:
Animal Husbandry - Care and maintenance of aquatic animals at the Georgia Aquarium.
Research and Conservation - Current research and conservation initiatives at the Georgia Aquarium.
Aquatic Engineering - The aquarium’s life support systems.
Aquatic Appetites - Dietary and nutritional needs of the aquarium’s animals.
GEORGIA AQUARIUM BY THE NUMBERS
— Schools can sign up by visiting the aquarium’s Web site (georgiaaquarium.org) or calling 404-581-4444. Students pay $9.50 each for the learning loop classes, which run about two hours. — For regular visitors, the aquarium had sold about 40,000 annual passes by the end of Tuesday. Those tickets have been on sale for two weeks. The aquarium sold more than 1,000 general admission tickets in the first two hours they were on sale Tuesday; those tickets went on sale at 3 p.m. on the Web site.
‘Today’ to broadcast from aquarium
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
NBC’s ‘Today’ show will broadcast from the Georgia Aquarium on Nov. 21, the day it opens to annual pass-holders. Hosts Matt Lauer and Al Roker are scheduled to be in Atlanta for the show, according to aquarium officials. The aquarium opens to general admission visitors two days later.
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