Ornamental Aquariums

My interest throughout life has largely been focused on zoos and terrestrial animals, though in recent years it feels like I've been spending just as much of my spare time visiting aquariums - including several surprisingly large ones that I didn't even know existed before I went out looking for them.  There might be a few reasons for this.  One is that, whereas a new zoo is a pretty rare occurrence these days, aquariums seem to be popping up left and right.  Another is that it seems that our societal expectations of aquariums are a lot different from those of zoos.

There seems to be this cultural norm that fish and aquatic invertebrates are ornamental.  We'd all probably be pretty surprised if we went to the dentist's office and there was a small aviary attached to waiting room, certainly if there was, say, a cage of tamarins or marmosets, but a fish tank seems normal.  A crocodile pool or tortoise yard would seem out of place at a fancy restaurant or a hotel, but a fish tank is normal.  It's like on some level we've drawn a line and said that some animals are ok to be seen purely in terms of entertainment and aesthetics, and others aren't.

A large part of the aquarium bonanza we've seen are new aquariums being built as anchors for retail space or urban renewal.  Merlin Entertainments, perhaps best known for its LegoLands and Madame Tussauds Wax Museums, operates the chain aquarium Sea Life, with locations around the world.  Cities are building new aquariums to revitalize old properties or re-energize old districts, such as the relatively new aquarium in St. Louis, or the planned one in Syracuse, New York.  

Furthermore, apart from the entertainment world, aquariums pop up in museums and nature centers, sometimes as a tiny feature, sometimes as a major component.  When I visit a zoo, I know I've visited a zoo.  With aquariums, I sometimes find myself wondering if a place I just visited counts as an aquarium or not.

A major factor, I suppose, is that compared to other animals, aquatic life is fairly unregulated in the US.  Assuming it's even legal in your state as a private business, you'd have to jump through some crazy hoops to get permits for, say, monkeys or exotic cats, and then if you did get them, there's a lot more public scrutiny on the keeping and welfare of those animals (not a lot, maybe, but it seems like things are tightening up, to judge from the crack down on some notoriously shoddy facilities in recent years).  But fish?  No one really seems to care.  If an aquarium steers away from marine mammals, it's almost as if the animals that they do have aren't seen as animals - more like living pieces of art.