We visited the Dallas World Aquarium (in 'West End' - Dallas) on Sept 4, 2004, and took a bunch of pictures. My son and I had a great time that day. We got there at 10am Saturday morning as they were opening. The entrance has been moved to the rear side (corner) of the building. The price went up as well. I think it was $10 or $12, but now it is $18. I was amazed at the serpentine line, but it puts you up at Level 2 as you enter.

These anemones are such unusual colors that they look fake.

Here are some great angels, but a guy stuck his head in the way as I shot this with a flash. (His hair is rockwork now.)

The carpet anemone is huge, with these two fearless tangs holding their stance. The Naso is easily 7" long.

This was an unexpected surprise. Seeing a diver in the tank cleaning the glass for 15 minutes was interesting. The Carpet anemone closed up some, but didn't seem distressed. The Gigas Clam to the right never twitched to her presence, but all the fish were off in the rockwork. The suction cup allowed her to control her body's placement well enough.

A gravel-vac made its appearance, and we could see a clear bowl at the surface used as an observational tool during the process.

The new shark exhibit is unique, as are a number of specialized tanks such as the Conch tank. The shark tank has a tunnel going through it for you to observe the eight (est.) sharks that circle in the 300,000g of water. Salinity is 1.023, btw.

There is plenty of other wildlife in this place, including penguins from Australia and Africa, two different Jaguars (9 yr old all black; 9 month old spotted), monkeys, toucans, flamingos, crocodiles and more.

I did ask for the person in charge of the marine tanks, and had to wait quite a bit. Most people told me Paula was the one to talk to, but she was out of sight all the time. After about 2 hours, I made one more effort to find her, and that is when I ran into Robin as she observed the feeding of the manatees (via Scuba divers). It took about 10 minutes until Paula came over. Several times people asked whom I was and why I wanted to speak with her. I'd brought a pile of DFWMAS.com business cards for them to hand out as needed, so I wanted to make contact. Overall, it was a good meeting and she was very MAS-supportive. I mentioned we are doing a coral propagation workshop, which she thought was excellent. Plus, I'm hoping they'll be a sponsor for our club one day. Btw, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they contacted the club to get some phytoplankton cultures to start their own. A lot of what we do they want to do as well.

Faith recently mentioned that she and James got to see behind-the-scenes, but we didn't get to do the same. I glanced through the open door to see the black back-sides of the tanks, and the giant pool pumps they use, but I didn't even see the skimmers employed.

Sadly, the stingray died. Apparently, its ovaries ruptured. It was 13 years old. Also, I learned that one of the sharks in the new exhibit was kept at Sea World (San Antonio) for a year before it was shipped to the DWA. Livestock is shipped in refrigerated tanker trucks that provide oxygen during transport. Water temperatures tend to be around 73F for many marine animals at DWA.

Meeting with Paula (cleaning the tank above) and Robin (the marine biologist on site) was nice and hopefully our club can interact more with the DWA.

Here are a few pictures from the Shark exhibit.

These are some random shots from that day.

There is a new cylindrical tank that uses a single 1000w bulb trying to penetrate 8 or 10' of water. It was filled with featherdusters and thorny oysters from Florida. The Black-Cap basslets in that tank were lovely to see.

And here are more images from the various marine tanks.

And a bunch of Royal Grammas! (Look closely)