Aquariums

[Theobromine]

Following that up with this article from NOAA about the incidence of wild dolphin deaths resulting from recreational fishing gear (informative article, but fyi it's a pdf). I recommend reading the whole article, but the quick overview is that they were finding an increase in dead, stranded dolphins that had ingested fishing gear such as hooks and monofilament line. The article goes in depth, but one possible cause of this is that dolphins were resorting to stealing bait or game fish off of fishing lines due to depletion of fish populations that resulted in difficulty finding enough food. I'm using this as an example to illustrate that...it's a dangerous world out there. It truly sucks, but humans are destroying habitats and trashing the environment at an incredible rate and it's having serious consequences for wildlife.

[SeaGlass Siren]

Im not saying ban all aquariums though. If it were solely used for the purpose of entertainment id rather go the virtual aquarium route.
obviously for rehab and release programs that require them to be inside a tank is completely dofferent than keeping them to make them jump through hoops.
as for the whole humans are detroying the environment we should keep them in a tank arguement, i rather people just watch what they put out... But i know im hoping for too much.

[SeaGlass Siren]

And obviously tanks used for research because there is merit to that.
Businesses that keep them to do tricks and other ridiculous things like having humans stand on top of them are a completely different story.

[Theobromine]

Im not saying ban all aquariums though. If it were solely used for the purpose of entertainment id rather go the virtual aquarium route.
obviously for rehab and release programs that require them to be inside a tank is completely dofferent than keeping them to make them jump through hoops.
as for the whole humans are detroying the environment we should keep them in a tank arguement, i rather people just watch what they put out... But i know im hoping for too much.

I wasn't suggesting you WERE saying that, I'm just doing my best to encourage everyone to think critically, you know? And there are so many people out there who ARE in favor of banning all aquariums outright, I just think it's very important to make sure everyone is as informed as possible. The mermaid community tends to be...at least SEMI-eco conscious, in that almost all of us at least care a great deal about the environment and such, and many mers do practice what they preach. The problem is just when people are preaching incorrect information.

Also, no one wishes $%^&* humans would stop f#%%ing up the environment more than I do, seriously :P I never ever imply that I think we should just keep animals in tanks and have done with it. Habitat loss and pollution and all the other environmental issues I've mentioned multiple times before are a HUGE issue, but we have to be realistic about it. Even if we could convince every person on the planed to start working together TOMORROW to reduce their carbon emissions, stop using plastic, start reusing or recycling everything, stop supporting unsafe practices and unsustainable fisheries etc. etc. etc. we would STILL not be seeing any significant reversal of these problems right away. Enough momentum has built up that it would take years to reverse much of the damage, and there are some things that are just completely irreversible. For example, there is now so much plastic in the oceans, much of it worn down into microscopic particles and distributed across every type of environment, that it is literally impossible to remove it all. Ever. Which is fucking bullshit in my opinion but there's nothing my opinion can do to change the reality of the situation. It makes me really really angry to think about...but this is why I attempt to educate everyone I possibly can. This is WHY I do what I do.

[AniaR]

I feel like this would be a cool place to photo dump some of my aquarium photos I've taken!

















Just a few

[SeaGlass Siren]

The second&third last photos remind me of a jellyfish princess character I've been daydreaming about :3

[Ciriun]

Wow Raina! Those photographs are stunning! Me with my amateur photography skills and run of the mill camera, I just have a massive collection of fish blurs. :P

As for the live animals vs. virtual, I wouldn't replace the entire aquarium with virtual fish, just stuff like dolphin shows. And like I mentioned, maybe utilize it to let people get the closest thing reasonable to encountering animals an aquarium can't house.

Most people are never going to swim with, for instance, a blue whale. Heck, even in the museums that have life sized models you can't get very close to them. But imagine standing in a room covered in huge screens and getting to watch a lifelike model majestically glide into view, filling the room and then some. It pauses for a moment with its eye perfectly level with you as if it is curious about the strange creature observing it. You reach out to touch the screen and the animal shifts closer, as if you were actually petting it. Then it continues on its way, the whole length of its body passing across the screens until at last it disappears from view.

Or for a more interactive one, have a guide or a quick video teach you signals that can be recognized by motion sensing software. This puts you in charge of your choice of virtual dolphin or porpoise species that you can direct to do tricks and feed virtual fish to. Different tricks could be paired with audio clips talking about how those behaviors are used in nature or veterinary care. Something a little like this, but obviously more advanced since technology has improved since this game was made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg2jUutszFc

There is also at least one freemium app game I know of that simulates dolphin training.

[Theobromine]

Those are cool photos, Raina! I'll have to find some of the ones my husband has taken.

I also wanted to post about a couple animals I've personally known and worked with. They've both passed away within the last year or two, sadly, but they are good examples of how long aquarium animals can live. Woodstock (Woody) was a female northern fur seal. Fur seals in the wild live 15-20 years. Woody was 24 when she passed. She had even undergone successful cataract surgery!

Lizzie the lemon shark was one of my favorites from the aquarium where I did my internship during college and had great fun learning to target feed sharks. Lemon sharks are generally known to live 25-27 years, and Lizzie was 30 when she passed. I was so upset when I found out she had passed away literally the day before I went to the aquarium with Iona and I had been looking for her

[SeaGlass Siren]

^ ciriun more or less said what I wanted to say

[Keiris]

Raina, those pics are AWESOME! You really are quite the shutterbug!!

[Theobromine]

Here's a link to my husband's photo gallery of fishes we've seen at various aquariums: https://www.flickr.com/photos/az84/s...57633018522469 I can't find my favorite one on there right now so I'll just link the whole album and find the Pterois antennata pic later :P We've got that one framed on our wall at home. I can't take credit for his photography skills but I do find cool stuff for him to shoot and help him identify them, haha.

[Mermaid Kassandra]

Thank you very much indeed Theobromine!



As always you're my "reference person" where to learn new and important things!



And congratulations to your husband he's so talented!

Wow Raina your pictures are breathtaking!
I think it would be a great idea to share here also the pictures we took in aquariums and correlate them with our experiences!

Ciruin that is stunning and I completely agree with you it would be amazing to have a simulation of real-size animals like whales and similar!
It would be helpful to increase interest also in that marine life that normally you can't see!

[SeaGlass Siren]

I kind of want to see an extinct species exhibit as part of the virtual aquarium . Imagine finally "seeing" the first species of fish and the dinosaurs

[Mermaid Kassandra]

I kind of want to see an extinct species exhibit as part of the virtual aquarium . Imagine finally "seeing" the first species of fish and the dinosaurs

Oh that would be awesome too!

[Ciriun]

I have so much love for marine reptiles and trilobites and stuff like that. So add to my dream exhibit an option where you can select different time periods and watch an exhibit of those creatures. Maybe if you tap on one on the screen it will bring up information about them somewhere unobtrusive, like at the very bottom. Personally I would want a minimum of one for each geologic period starting at the Cambrian.

Should I start a new topic for currently existing virtual fish/sea creature games and such? Because this is really making me want to share and discuss them and I wouldn't want to steal someone else's thread.

[Mermaid Kassandra]

I have so much love for marine reptiles and trilobites and stuff like that. So add to my dream exhibit an option where you can select different time periods and watch an exhibit of those creatures. Maybe if you tap on one on the screen it will bring up information about them somewhere unobtrusive, like at the very bottom. Personally I would want a minimum of one for each geologic period starting at the Cambrian.

Should I start a new topic for currently existing virtual fish/sea creature games and such? Because this is really making me want to share and discuss them and I wouldn't want to steal someone else's thread.

Yes please do! 😍

[Theobromine]

Thanks Kassandra I'm always happy to help out! This is my biggest passion so I love sharing my knowledge, and I love learning from other people too. There's always so much more to learn! I will post some more information and sources soon when I get a chance. Also, can I tell my husband you said that about his photography? I always tell him he's so talented and his photos are good enough to sell, but he doesn't think they are :P

I know for a fact that I personally was inspired big-time by going to zoos and aquariums as a kid. As much as I also always loved watching nature documentaries, there was something about the experience of seeing these real live animals face-to-face that could never be replicated. And the later in life, being able to work with them continued and even intensified that feeling. I'd always liked sharks, but getting to know them personally when I did my aquarium internship during college, I absolutely fell in love with them. All of the sharks were individually target fed a couple of times per week using long poles, so you had to be able to identify each shark by its colors and markings (which was easy if there were only one or two of a certain species, but we had 10 nurse sharks!). We had to keep track of exactly how much of which type of fish/squid/clam and how many vitamins each shark was eating and record it so we could keep track. It was pretty cool because each shark had a particular feeding area around the edge of the big tank, and they all knew where to go when it was feeding time (that didn't stop some of them from occasionally sneaking off and stealing someone else's food, though). I also learned that sharks can even be clicker-trained. They weren't doing it actively when I worked there, but the curator at the time was an elasmobranch husbandry expert who had done some work on clicker-training sand tiger sharks. Those guys are smarter than most people think.

[Ciriun]

New thread for virtual fishies is here: http://mernetwork.com/index/showthre...428#post218428

And I don't suppose any of these wildly skilled and talented photographers would be willing to share a few tips for aquarium photography? I don't expect a full lecture because that's what it would take to get anywhere near that good, but maybe a few of the more basic tricks to getting a fish that isn't blurry from motion and covered in glare on the glass?

[Mermaid Kassandra]

Thanks Kassandra I'm always happy to help out! This is my biggest passion so I love sharing my knowledge, and I love learning from other people too. There's always so much more to learn! I will post some more information and sources soon when I get a chance. Also, can I tell my husband you said that about his photography? I always tell him he's so talented and his photos are good enough to sell, but he doesn't think they are :P

I know for a fact that I personally was inspired big-time by going to zoos and aquariums as a kid. As much as I also always loved watching nature documentaries, there was something about the experience of seeing these real live animals face-to-face that could never be replicated. And the later in life, being able to work with them continued and even intensified that feeling. I'd always liked sharks, but getting to know them personally when I did my aquarium internship during college, I absolutely fell in love with them. All of the sharks were individually target fed a couple of times per week using long poles, so you had to be able to identify each shark by its colors and markings (which was easy if there were only one or two of a certain species, but we had 10 nurse sharks!). We had to keep track of exactly how much of which type of fish/squid/clam and how many vitamins each shark was eating and record it so we could keep track. It was pretty cool because each shark had a particular feeding area around the edge of the big tank, and they all knew where to go when it was feeding time (that didn't stop some of them from occasionally sneaking off and stealing someone else's food, though). I also learned that sharks can even be clicker-trained. They weren't doing it actively when I worked there, but the curator at the time was an elasmobranch husbandry expert who had done some work on clicker-training sand tiger sharks. Those guys are smarter than most people think.

I feel the same and I love to learn from other people too!

Yes of course you can tell him what I said he must know his talent 😊