Here is a short story of what happens behind the scenes at the Aquarium of the Pacific locatedin Long Beach, California. Big thanks to fellow photographer Erik Jay for inviting me on this tour.

When you arrive at the Aquarium main entrance your guide will meet and give you a brief overview of what to expect and things to avoid while on your tour. The first door they opened to walk us behind the exhibits had a strange set of scientific beakers with hoses in the openings and colored liquids with bubbles. It was explained that they grow a lot of the foods that are fed to the animals in the exhibits. The strange mad scientist setup is how the Aquarium personnel grow different kinds of foods for the animals. One of the things they grow is Brine Shrimp, you will notice in the photo that the color of Brine Shrimp differs with the age of the animal.

What food they don’t grow themselves they purchase from local markets. It was emphasized that the fish, shrimps, squid, and clam they do purchase must be green and sustainable. When you step into the area above the main exhibit tanks where the large animals live you are asked to step into a door mat sized tray that has a liquid in it. This keeps visitors from tracking a host of unwanted germs and things that might harm the animals in the area above the main tanks. In this area they have all kinds of animals in tanks not seen by the public. Some are there because they are to young to be put into the exhibit tanks, some are sick and need to be isolated from the other animals as a precaution.

The following information was approved for this article by the Public Affairs Person at the Aquarium. What I found most intriguing was that the Aquarium is home to illegally obtained corals. Let me explain. When the fish and wild life department confiscates shipments of corals that are on the list of corals not to be brought into the United States they take them to the Aquarium of the Pacific. We were asked not to photograph these corals so I have no photos to show you but if you take this BTS tour you too can see these corals. Another unexpected thing is shelves full of artificial corals and plants that are used for the large animal tanks. Divers are in these tanks daily working with the animals, cleaning, and anything else required to maintain the tanks, In the process of this work the plants and corals are disturbed. If these were real live plants and corals they would not survive so artificial ones are used.

While we walked around the permitter of the main tank on the surface of the water was a sea turtle swimming along watching us. The animals are used to being fed when humans are present so they start to gather on the top of the tank. In this work area there was a round sling and small hoisting crane to put the sling into the water. When the sling is lowered the rays that have a round shape know that they must swim into the sling to be fed. Likewise with the regular shaped fish (their sling is rectangle) they swim into the sling to be fed. They call this the feeding station and feed the animals in this way so that they can insure that all of the animals are fed. Think of this as a drive thru fast food place and you always get your favorite foods. This article was only intended as look behind the scenes but the aquarium offers much more than what was said here.

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