爱华网The fish, of course, eat fish. They also eat green Jell-O. Every morning starting around 6, the staff of the Georgia Aquarium, the world‘s largest, works for hours in a stainless-steel commissary that would be the envy of any five-star restaurant. They sort, inspect, and chop and quality standards meet human tolerances: "When in doubt, throw it out." The beluga whales each eat 54 pounds of herring a day. The green Jell-O delivers algae and other nutrients captive critters might not otherwise get. The goal is to keep all 120,000 beings here happy and fat enough that they won‘t turn on one another.As amazing as the year-old Georgia Aquarium is for visitors nearly 4 million will likely gaze into the tanks this year, 2 million more than expected it is also a meticulously planned work space. Staffers visited some 55 aquariums in 13 countries, compiling the best design ideas from each before the first blueprint was drawn. The facility, in downtown Atlanta, cost more than a quarter-billion dollars, donated by Bernie Marcus, cofounder of Home Depot.
Work areas are generous. Among the most distinctive is the Ray Way, a corridor around the animal-care areas that is nearly as wide as a two-lane highway. It‘s named for Ray Davis, a Sea World veteran and the aquarium‘s head of zoological operations, who constantly fended off architects and engineers who seemed determined to defeat its purpose-moving whales, sharks, and rays as painlessly as possible. "Every time we‘d look at new plans, there‘d be a column or piping in there," says marine biologist Bruce Carlson, the aquarium‘s second employee. The aquarium has labs for testing the water chemistry sometimes multiple times a day in all 50 display tanks. It also has a hospital with ICU "beds" for ailing fish, treatment rooms that can be chilled to 55 degrees for sea otters, an autopsy room (sad but true), and cranes and lifts that can handle up to 20 tons. The aquarium has a behind-the-scenes "education loop" for waves of schoolchildren, who also have a separate lunchroom.aihuau.comThere are some things only experienced aquarium staff would notice. Executive director Jeff Swanagan, former director of Tampa‘s Florida Aquarium and the first employee here, says that at every aquarium in the world, you‘ll find drains in the floor that are dry and 3 feet away, a standing puddle of water."All day," he says, "someone squeegees puddles into drains." So when construction crews poured concrete for the first floor, Swanagan says, "I went down to the general foreman and said, ‘Is that drain the low point in the floor?‘" The crews got the message: At the Georgia Aquarium, the water flows into the drains. No squeegees required.每天清晨6点,佐治亚水族馆——世界最大的水族馆的员工就开始为馆内的12万条鱼类准备食物了, 这些员工要在不锈钢的食堂里工作好几个小时, 才能为这些挑剔的鱼儿准备出够吃而且营养丰富的食物。只有一年馆龄的左治亚水族馆已经迎接了近400万游客,比预想的多了一倍。这样的成功来自于之前的充分准备, 水族馆员工参观了13个国家的55个水族馆,综合了所有最好的设计之后才敲定这个造价达2.5亿美元的庞然大物的设计雏形。馆内的设施令人叹为观止,有用来移动鲸鱼和鲨鱼的双车道高速公路那么宽的走廊,实验室有为鱼准备的医院和验尸房, 甚至还有可以挑起20吨重物的起重机和电梯!当然还有一些不为人知的细节,比如,地板的倾斜度恰到好处, 水会自动流入到排水管中, 连拖把都不需要。
