Northern Pacific Aquarium
Go Deeper
What is an aquarium? The common person will typically respond by saying that an aquarium is identical to a regular zoo and holds fish instead of land animals. However, an aquarium typically contains more than just fish it contains multiple marine organisms. Specifically, an aquarium contains marine mammals, jellyfish, corals, and sharks including a number of other marine organisms. There is something interesting for a first time visitor to the aquarium which is most of the marine organisms live in communities. What are communities? A community, as Tom Garrison a scientist defines "community", is made up of " many populations of organisms that interact at a particular location" (Oceanography: An Invitation pg.456); however in this …show more content…
One interesting detail about the Northern Pacific exhibit is most if not all the organisms live in communities in this exhibit. Specifically, the sea otter lives with fishes that have a niche for cleaning the water in a way. What is a niche? A niche is an organism's "occupation within that habitat, its relationship to food and enemies, an expression of what the organism is doing."(Oceanography pg.457), and this fish tends to clean the tank by eating the fesses of the sea otter, just as the class saw, as well as eating algae that accumulate within the tank. Moving along this exhibit the visitor will encounter the giant Japanese spider (marcocheria kaempferi) crab that is in a community with other marine organisms like lobsters. However, both of the lobster and spider crab have the same niche which is to clean the ocean floor or this case the tank especially when the fish within this tank eat their food and it falls to the bottom of the tank. Probably the most popular exhibit, most exciting, and largest community exhibit the visitor will explore is the shark exhibit. Specifically, the visitor will find out that the skin of sharks is rough due to the fact that their skin is made up of microscopic teeth, especially the zebra shark whose skin is the roughest and their scientific name is stegostoma fasciatum. The visitor will also note that this exhibit has a large community, because it contains rays like the whip tail ray. Specifically, during feeding time the sharks eat then the ray usually eats the leftover
What is an aquarium? The common person will typically respond by saying that an aquarium is identical to a regular zoo and holds fish instead of land animals. However, an aquarium typically contains more than just fish it contains multiple marine organisms. Specifically, an aquarium contains marine mammals, jellyfish, corals, and sharks including a number of other marine organisms. There is something interesting for a first time visitor to the aquarium which is most of the marine organisms live in communities. What are communities? A community, as Tom Garrison a scientist defines "community", is made up of " many populations of organisms that interact at a particular location" (Oceanography: An Invitation pg.456); however in this …show more content…
One interesting detail about the Northern Pacific exhibit is most if not all the organisms live in communities in this exhibit. Specifically, the sea otter lives with fishes that have a niche for cleaning the water in a way. What is a niche? A niche is an organism's "occupation within that habitat, its relationship to food and enemies, an expression of what the organism is doing."(Oceanography pg.457), and this fish tends to clean the tank by eating the fesses of the sea otter, just as the class saw, as well as eating algae that accumulate within the tank. Moving along this exhibit the visitor will encounter the giant Japanese spider (marcocheria kaempferi) crab that is in a community with other marine organisms like lobsters. However, both of the lobster and spider crab have the same niche which is to clean the ocean floor or this case the tank especially when the fish within this tank eat their food and it falls to the bottom of the tank. Probably the most popular exhibit, most exciting, and largest community exhibit the visitor will explore is the shark exhibit. Specifically, the visitor will find out that the skin of sharks is rough due to the fact that their skin is made up of microscopic teeth, especially the zebra shark whose skin is the roughest and their scientific name is stegostoma fasciatum. The visitor will also note that this exhibit has a large community, because it contains rays like the whip tail ray. Specifically, during feeding time the sharks eat then the ray usually eats the leftover