THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 4, 1996 TAG: 9605030050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
LOOKING DOWN into the Norfolk Canyon Aquarium from a rickety catwalk near the ceiling was like staring into a yawning bomb crater with rock shelves for walls.
Below us, workmen on the floor of the Virginia Marine Science Museum were so busy wheelbarrowing in cement and troweling it onto the walls that they never looked up.
We were gazing into what will be a replica of the canyon that splits the Earth's crust 60 miles off our coast. Way out there where the Atlantic Ocean is a mile and a half deep in some places.
Huge. That's the only way to describe the Norfolk Canyon Aquarium in the museum's Atlantic Ocean Pavilion.
My guide, museum public relations specialist Alice Scanlan, said that when the aquarium is finished, pumping enough salt water into the huge bowl to fill it will take at least a week!
It will then contain 300,000 gallons of water. That's larger than the largest indoor tank at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
Once completed, the Norfolk Canyon Aquarium will house denizens that are to be found in the 35-mile long canyon.
Sand tiger sharks, for example. They are often found off our coast. Gliding a few inches off the ocean floor with mouths closed, their lips fixed in a perpetual smile.
And brown sharks, their faster cousins. About 20 sharks will roam the tank, sharing their huge, water-filled dungeon with large fish: barracuda, albacore and amberjack.
The enormity of the $35 million expansion at the museum is difficult to describe. Or to see fully, even now. Electrical cables dangle from ceilings, the metallic whine of electrical saws splits the silence. Boards cover holes in the earth.
But one thing is clear. Everything is on a grand scale. It takes a casual stroller an hour and a half to walk through all the new construction.
While none of the exhibits in the Atlantic Ocean Pavilion is completed, everything I saw was stunning.
For example, there's a realistic likeness of a humpback whale suspended from the ceiling of the ocean pavilion. It seems to be diving directly for the viewer's head at a sharp angle. The monster weighs 1,600 pounds and is 35 feet long. Its real-life counterpart would weigh about 40 tons, Scanlan said. Humpbacks - popularly known as the singing whales - are the whales most often sighted in Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic.
The Sea Turtle Aquarium in the ocean pavilion is nearing completion. It contains a steel-legged likeness of the Chesapeake Light Tower substructure in the middle to give visual interest.
When it is filled with 70,000 gallons of water, visitors will be able to see juvenile sea turtles with shells measuring about 4 feet across swimming between and around the tower legs. Nearby will be a window where viewers can watch museum scientists working in the turtle hatching laboratory.
After more than an hour of snooping around, I hadn't seen a third of what will be in place once the Atlantic Ocean Pavilion and the IMAX 3D Theater open.
The 300-seat theater is almost completed, by the way, with only the finishing touches remaining. The theater's screen towers six stories above the seats. Forty-four speakers surround the audience, pumping 12,500 watts of digital sound. Plush seats feature individual wooden cup holders. Vertical strands of tiny fiber optic lights glow from the dark blue walls, the lights changing colors continually.
That theater is a gripper. Only three like it in the nation; the closest is the Sony Theater in New York.
There will be plenty to see when the expanded museum has its grand opening June 15, although the Norfolk Canyon Aquarium will probably not be ready for viewing until later.
An interesting part of the museum that will not be seen by visitors is a holding area - now a warehouse several miles away - which will be a temporary home for sharks, turtles, fish and other marine life before they are displayed for the public.
When I dropped by the warehouse, I saw what appeared to be hundreds of lookdowns, spadefish and spot gliding past a viewing port in their 10,000-gallon tank. In another tank, lumbering sea turtles moved in slow motion, propelled by large flippers across the bottom of their temporary home.
Ever seen sharks that appear as docile and harmless as goldfish in a bowl?
That's the way the eight sharks - sand tiger and browns - submerged in a 38,000-gallon tank appeared to me.
Beth Firchau, the exhibits technician who showed me around, said that because the sharks are fed regularly, they are docile. As she spoke, a sleek sand tiger shark surfaced a few inches from my hand propped on the tank top, and swam past it, showing no interest.
``The sand tigers have teeth that look like toothpicks,'' Beth said. ``Their teeth aren't made for cutting but for grabbing food and bringing it in.''
The Owl Creek Marsh Pavilion is already open. While I was there, a contingent of school kids from Lynchburg arrived. They were using zoom lens magnifiers to examine marsh plants, insects and animals too small to be seen clearly with the naked eye.
What is taking shape south of Rudee Inlet is more than a world-class museum. It is a celebration of our unique coastal environment. A celebration that museum director Mac Rawls has predicted will ``set the standard for marine science facilities of the future.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by STEVE EARLEY, The Virginian-Pilot
Temporary home: a brown shark swims past a window in the
38,000-gallon holding tank at the Marine Science Museum warehouse.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA MARINE SCIENCE MUSEUM by CNB