WET ’N’ WILD - The Pueblo Chieftain: Local
Posted: Sunday, January 9, 2011 12:00 am
By LYNDA LA ROCCA | SPECIAL TO THE CHIEFTAIN |
DENVER — It looks like a miniature version of the great white shark that wreaked deadly havoc in the classic movie "Jaws."
But the sand tiger shark prowling the depths of the Downtown Aquarium’s Shipwreck exhibit is actually fairly harmless, as sharks go.
Although it has an undeserved reputation as a man-eater due to its large size (it can reach lengths of 11 feet) and gaping mouth filled with jagged, razor-sharp teeth perpetually bared in the underwater equivalent of a snarl, the sand tiger is not particularly aggressive.
And its anthropomorphic habit of belching makes it seem even more innocuous. The sand tiger surfaces to gulp air, which it holds in its stomach and releases to adjust and maintain buoyancy, enabling it to hover motionless beneath the waves.
The sand tiger shark is one of some 500 marine species that swim, splash, dive and dart through the Downtown Aquarium’s more than 1 million gallons of underwater exhibits.
Originally known as Ocean Journey, the Downtown Aquarium was purchased in 2003 by Landry’s Restaurants Inc., which renovated and reopened it two years later as an educational and family-entertainment complex that includes a full-service restaurant, the Nautilus Ballroom and the upscale, adults-only Dive Lounge bar.
One of only four Colorado facilities (the Pueblo Zoo is another) to meet the rigorous accreditation standards of the international Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the Downtown Aquarium features 10 freshwater and saltwater “ecosystem” exhibit areas, ranging from river headwaters, tidal basins and lagoons to coral reefs and ocean floors. Each habitat displays sea creatures from around the world; several also house landlubbers like desert-dwelling reptiles, jungle amphibians, tropical birds, shorebirds and mammals such as the endangered Sumatran tiger.
To see these critters, visitors meander through lush, misty rainforests complete with tangled undergrowth, towering trees and exotic, flowering plants; high-mountain wilderness areas where waterfalls cascade over rocky outcrops; wraparound, tunnel-style aquariums that give the sense of literally being underwater; and a fascinating desert landscape where the “weather” abruptly changes from sunny to stormy and a flash flood thunders down a narrow sandstone canyon. Arrows on signs labeled “wet zone” and “dry zone” indicate where to stand to avoid being splashed by this rushing torrent.
Gazing at the white underbellies of two southern stingrays swimming overhead in the Under the Sea exhibit, it’s hard to remember that I’m actually inside a landlocked, 107,000-square-foot, steel-and-glass building located a mile above sea level and 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean.
As I watch, a blue-skinned moray eel — its skin only appears green because of the thick yellow slime that naturally covers it — pokes its nightmarish head out of a rock crevice. Suddenly, it slithers toward a large Pacific green turtle, also known as a black sea turtle, that is resting placidly on the gravelly bottom of this 200,000-gallon tank.
“Hey, you turtle! Boo!” a toddler calls as the creature waves its front flippers and slowly rises past a bottom-dwelling nurse shark, then swims a few lazy circles with a buddy before the pair approach two human divers delivering a meal to these coral-reef residents. Soon the divers are surrounded by a swarm of yellowtail snapper, along with several stingrays, the turtles, a dark-spotted giant grouper and a hermaphroditic Mexican hogfish.
The hogfish begin life as females, becoming functional males as they mature. This particular old boy has also become rather pushy, says an aquarium volunteer, one of several stationed at various exhibits.
“He snaps at the divers and really likes to bite at shiny objects like jewelry,” the volunteer explains. I’d be snappish, too, if I’d transformed into a member of the opposite sex, especially one with a hog-like snout, protruding lips and a fleshy lump on its head.
So do the aquarium’s sea creatures ever take a piece out of each other?
“Since they’re very well-fed, that doesn’t happen often. But when they do eat each other, it’s usually in front of a crowd,” the volunteer jokes.
(As if to prove this point, my husband Steve and I are having a drink later at the Dive Lounge when we, along with four women sitting near a 150,000-gallon reef tank spanning the wall of the adjoining restaurant, are startled by a small shark that devours a fish and darts off before we can even determine its species.)
Unlike that shark, the winsome river otters frolicking and back-flipping in the waters of the North American Wilderness exhibit don’t look like predators. But these carnivores will eat whatever they can get their claws on, from fish and frogs to turtles and rodents.
And in the wild, much of this exhibit’s marine life would make a veritable otter smorgasbord. There are tanks of sturgeon, sunfish, crappie, gar and walleye, the latter named for its silvery eyes that resemble those of a blinded or “walleyed” animal. Also represented are endangered, endemic Colorado River Basin fish like the humpback chub, the Colorado pikeminnow (North America’s largest minnow, formerly called the Colorado squawfish) and Colorado’s official state fish, the greenback cutthroat trout.
The only trout species native to the Colorado River Basin, these brilliantly colored, scarlet-, green- and gold-scaled fish have been decimated by introduced species like the brown and rainbow trout, also displayed here.
Wandering through the different exhibits, I’m struck by the neon hues of red coral, pink sea anemones, blue starfish, purple sea urchins and orange sea horses. And I’m fascinated by the imaginative names of some of the marine creatures. The bright pink Popeye catalufa has huge, bulging, pink-and-black, “pop” eyes, while the venomous lionfish really does resemble a stylized lion when its fins are fully extended. And you’ve got to love descriptive monikers like unicorn tang, Napoleon wrasse, sergeant major, graybar grunt, and my personal favorite, spotted sweetlips.
Standing atop a see-through “porthole” and looking down at predatory sharks, wrasse, grouper and barracuda swimming in the eerie, diffused light of the “Shipwreck” exhibit, my attention is captured by a 12-foot-long sawfish lying motionless at the bottom of this 400,000-gallon tank. A relative of both sharks and rays, sawfish are immediately recognizable by their rostrum, a long, wicked-looking snout studded with teeth-like denticle scales on each side. The rostrum functions as a rake to uncover prey buried beneath seafloor sediment, a saw to hack prey into edible pieces, and a defensive weapon.
An even more unusual perspective on marine life awaits in the replicated fishing village of the At the Wharf exhibit. Here, instead of looking down, visitors can crawl beneath wharf pilings and look up at tidal-habitat residents through oversized, clear-plastic “bubbles.”
This is where I have a close encounter with a 4-foot-long, brown-, beige- and gold-spotted lingcod that has draped itself over a bubble.
Shooting oblique glances my way, the lingcod seems annoyed by my sudden appearance — although it’s difficult to be certain, given that I’m trying to assess the facial expression of a big-headed bottom-feeder whose enormous mouth is frozen in a permanent frown.
