The first fish have arrived at the new Greater Cleveland Aquarium. Employees were buzzing with excitement as the new residents arrived after a 22-hour trip. Almost 500 saltwater creatures were delivered in an 18-wheeler truck after making a 1,500-mile trip from Key West, Florida in four cylindrical tanks containing 30,000 gallons of saltwater. Stingrays, crabs and colorful squirrel fish, among other sea creatures, were carefully unloaded by the employees and transferred into temporary containers inside the aquarium, where they will remain until their permanent tanks are ready.
The special delivery had a few surprises in store for the employees. “You don’t know exactly what to expect,” explained Ray Popik, aquarist. “You get an invoice with a number and species, but you don’t know the sizes.”
“I’m really happy,” he added. “This has been a construction site for a while, and it finally feels like an aquarium. We have water and fish.”
The aquarium is due to open on January 21, 2012. Tanks are already being prepared, and the first of the facility’s 40 tanks was filled with water on Tuesday. Three more trucks will bring more saltwater fish from Florida before then, to ensure that the aquarium is teeming with water creatures before the exhibit opens.
Meanwhile, the first 500 fish will be enough to keep employees busy in the meantime.
Aquarist Halle Minshall said, “It’s really exciting to finally have fish here. We stayed up late last night making sure that we had everything ready.”
The $33-million project is the handiwork of New Zealand-based Marinescape, and will feature a curving acrylic tunnel inside a 70-foot shark tank, so that visitors can safely experience sharks swimming above and around them. The Aquarium is built into a portion of the old Powerhouse in the Flats, and is the only aquarium in the state.
