Today, we'll continue our exploration of the California Academy of Sciences by visiting the second, and older, of it's animal attractions, the Steinhart Aquarium.
Befitting, visitors who enter the aquarium via the rainforest, as I did, will first be treated to a gallery of Amazon river life. An acrylic tunnel leads through a blooded forest home of arapaima and other Amazon river fish, with an enormous habitat for green anaconda waiting just on the other side. The aquarium itself is a split between large tanks - most impressive being the 212,000 gallon Philippine coral reef, which itself serves as a gateway to a gallery of coral reefs - and small galleries of smaller, single-species tanks. Many of these ae grouped into the Water Planet gallery, where tanks are set against a backdrop of flowing blue that it quite soothing to watch. Among the animals that I was happiest to see was CAS's most famous resident, the Australian lungfish Methuselah. Methuselah is estimated to be over 90 years old, making him the world's oldest known aquarium fish.
If there's been one uniting feature of all of the California aquariums I've visited - and they have been legion - it's been their excellent displays of California coastal life, and Steinhart is no exception. While not as large as the Philippine reef, the California coast display is still a beautiful habitat that does an excellent job of recreating the ecosystem that lies just off the shore. Tide pools are one of the most enchanting features of the coastal environment, so not surprisingly those are recreated here as well. These tide pool displays double-function as touch tanks, allowing curious visitors to have supervised up-close encounters with marine invertebrates.
As is often the case of aquariums, it seems that there is a suspicion that fish and invertebrates alone have limited power to hold the attention of visitors, and so it often falls to other species to carry the day. Accordingly, there are several exhibits of reptiles and amphibians in the aquarium. Foremost among these is The Swamp, a large habitat for American alligator, with a white specimen being the focus. The alligator exhibit is also home to that other southern giant reptile, the alligator snapping turtle. This is a species that often gets the short-end of the stick in zoo and aquarium exhibits in terms of size and complexity, so I always like seeing them exhibited with alligators because it generally results in larger, more complex habitats. The viewing area for the gators and turtles also features smaller exhibits of herps of the southern swamplands. Besides the underwater viewing area, the alligator exhibit also has an above-level viewing deck from the main floor of the museum.
Steinhart turned 100 years old (even older than Methuselah the lungfish!) the year of my visit, and the aquarium has quite the history. I'm not sure if it was a temporary display for the 100th anniversary or a permanent one, but at the time of my visit there was a very interesting (if easily overlooked) gallery that displayed images and signage about the aquarium's storied past. The facility really was a history maker in the world of public aquariums, with many incredible "firsts" to its name, both in terms of animal husbandry (for example, it was the first facility in the US to use brine shrimp, now a culinary staple for aquatic wildlife - to feed the collection) or breedings and exhibitions. For example, I had no idea that Steinhart was the first US aquarium to house and then successfully release a great white shark. Even the ring tank, a classic of US aquarium design which allows visitors to stand completely surrounded by fish, made it's US debut here (having first been developed in Japan).
If the California Academy of Sciences has a week point in its animal collection, I'd say it's the one exhibit in the main body of the museum. Tucked away among the displays of taxidermized wildlife in the Tusher African Hall there is a colony of African penguins. It's by no means the worst exhibit I've seen of this species, either in accredited or unaccredited facilities. Compared to the many excellent other exhibits in the aquarium and the rainforest, it just seemed small, plain, and a little shoe-horned in (marine penguins not really meshing as well with the savannah and jungle species on display in the gallery). I've always been mort impressed with large, dynamic penguin colonies, and while there is nesting and breeding going on in this one, it still seemed like a tiny cameo of penguin life, compared to the excellent exhibits I've seen at some other facilities. If the CAS wanted a live African animal exhibit to supplement the gallery, I think the space allotment would have perhaps worked better for meerkat, or hyrax, or maybe some African reptiles.
All in all, I could easily have spent an entire day at the California Academy of Sciences. As it was, I was limited in time and had so much I wanted to do in my day in Golden Gate Park, so I was forced to rush a bit, especially in the aquarium (because no way I was going to rush in the rainforest, on principle, after waiting so long to get in). It really is a gem of a facility with amazing collections - living and otherwise - and a great history.
PS: Completely unaffiliated with CAS, but if you're in Golden Gate Park, check out the sprawling paddock that's home to a herd of American bison, located on the western end of the Park.
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