Surprise Snapshots
Meet the aquarium’s stellar supporting cast
[Posted April 30, 2008]
By Niki Price
Oregon Coast Today
The Oregon Coast Aquarium has its big, showy celebrities: the seven-gill sharks that roam the Passages of the Deep, for example, or the graceful, gigantic sea lions that zoom past the subsurface window. Humans are fascinated by these predators, as well we should be. If we weren’t genetically programmed to fixate on the big animals with teeth, our species would already be part of the fossil record.
So don’t blame yourself if you’ve never seen a sea pen. These animals, found in their own tank in the Sandy Shores gallery, look like orange quill pens stuck nib-down in the sand. They open up their feather-like body to catch whatever plankton is suspended in the water column — and if they aren’t getting enough food, they expel water from their bodies, shrink up and drift with the current until they find a more productive spot.
The sea pens live between the anchovy school and the intertidal touch pool, so many visitors walk by without even seeing them. Slow down between the showy exhibits, said Jim Burke, director of animal husbandry, and you’ll learn a great deal.
“These plants and animals are often in the bigger exhibits, but you can’t really see them. These smaller tanks are like little snapshots, micro environments, of what exists in the natural world,” Burke said.
Across the gallery from the sea pens, a small tank holds a clean and well-lit version of an estuarine community, with 2-inch long sculpins darting in and around empty barnacle shells, and surrounded by the same eelgrass you’ll find a few hundred yards from the aquarium, in Yaquina Bay. Amongst the eelgrass are two types of fish that are naturally camouflaged to get lost there: tube-snouts and pipe fish.
“Our aquarists spend as much time as they can in the environment they’re caring for here. So they’re out there, diving and snorkeling, in low tide and high tide, through the seasons, so they can see what the big picture is, from year to year. These small exhibits are easier to change, to portray the different things we see out there,” Burke said. “If you glance over it, there’s a lot that you’ll miss. These tanks help people slow down and take a look, by pointing out these small things.”
Most exhibits are constructed to mimic the natural habitat, but there are exceptions. Right now, in the same Sandy Shores gallery, visitors can enjoy a rare sight: the growth of baby skates. This process normally takes place inside a four-sided egg case that is attached to kelp (when it’s found ashore, this case is called a mermaid’s purse). The skate lives inside for several months, eating off the yolk sack its mother left behind, before it outgrows its case and swims away. Aquarists obtained one of these cases, with a live embryo inside, and cut a viewing window to reveal the pale, squirming skate inside.
In the same tank, there’s a Petri dish with another skate and its egg sack. This creature was found in a destroyed mermaid’s purse on the beach near Newport. Three other embryos were already dead, but aquarists managed to transplant this one safely.
“This exhibit is more interpretive. Obviously, skates don’t come in Petri dishes and egg cases don’t have windows,” Burke said. “But it’s really interesting to see embryonic development in these animals, to see them go from an egg to a full-sized juvenile. If this egg case was turned on its side, and didn’t have the window, you might think it was a piece of kelp. You would never be able to experience this and understand it in this way.”
Because these smaller exhibits, generally found along the walls in the aquarium’s exhibit halls, are more easily changed, they are the first public home for strange and unusual creatures collected by staff or donated by fishermen. Red octopus, strawberry anemone, squid-nosed rockfish, crescent gunnels, juvenile flatfish and many more fascinating creatures are always there, if you take the time to stop and observe.
The aquarists change the informational panels regularly, so that no matter how many times you’ve been the aquarium, there’s always something new.
“A lot of people come to places like this for recreation, as well as education. We want people to learn but we don’t want to overwhelm them with information, either. If you take the time to read what’s on the walls – or even half of what’s on the walls – you’ll learn a lot,” Burke said.
Among the many surprises to be discovered this May is Oddwaters, the newest installation in the temporary exhibit hall. It features odd and beautiful creatures from waters around the world, swimming amidst colorful blown glass sculptures by artists from The Edge Gallery in South Beach. This fascinating and fun collection will have its grand opening Memorial Day weekend, but they’re already letting visitors sneak a peek inside.
“We have a lot of return visitors, people who come here more than once a year, and we like to keep it fresh for them, as well as for our staff and volunteers,” Burke said.
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| Skate Egg (Cindy Hanson) |
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| Grunt Sculpin (Cindy Hanson) |
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| Sea Pen (Cindy Hanson) |
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