XCARET PARK

First aquarium that lets you touch just renewed

SUMARIO… A number of individual displays create educational curricula of their own.

By MERRILYN McDONALD
merrmcdon@hotmail.com

Have you ever touched a live starfish? Have you ever touched the tentacles of a feather duster worm and watched it quickly pull itself into a tight, small ball? Have you ever held a young sea turtle in the palm of your hand? In most aquariums, people usually just look at the sights. Xcaret’s Aquarium, however, encourages you to touch and feel, and you can do all of the above on its experiential daily tour, plus more.
Xcaret’s ecological tours of the Aquarium, Butterfly Pavilion and Mayan Jungle are offered in English and Spanish, and provide unique personal looks into the intimate workings of nature. As for the Aquarium tour, Xcaret’s Aquarium was the first of its kind in the world, displaying various depths of a living coral reef: its life forms and various structural formations. Uniquely, it has an open water system, which courses unfiltered ocean water through its tanks and displays. Receiving plankton from the sea, over 500 coral organisms have, to date, begun their life here, creating a legitimate coral habitat.
The largest displays show reef life at 100, 66 and 16 feet. The effects of depth variation are created by artificial light, and the true-to-life environments are carefully monitored and controlled. Sponges, fish, and a variety of soft and hard corals can be viewed as they exist in their natural environment within the sea. Sponges, corals, anemones and large fish populate the lower depths. Many corals grow horizontally in order to capitalize on the restricted light. More light and more fish characterize the middle depths, with schools of sardines and other small fish swimming through. Balloon fish live best at this depth, where, when threatened, they fill themselves with water and inflate to double their size. The same species of coral, which were horizontal in greater depths, here grow vertically like trees; and colorful parrotfish, surgeonfish and butterfly fish abound, captivating the eye with their beauty and grace. The shallow reef depth provides dramatically different formations of life, and soft coral species sway gently with the movement of the waves.
A number of individual displays create educational curricula of their own. A section designated Protection and Defenses features species such as the scorpion fish and flounder, which change colors and design to successfully “hide” from enemy aggressors. Poisonous and aggressive fish have color-based systems of defense. Bright colored fish are known by others to be highly poisonous. Have you ever noticed that neither restaurants nor stores ever sell the really colorful fish? Likewise, the extremely aggressive fish are usually black.
Symbiotic relationships are demonstrated by the moray fish and the red shrimp. The shrimp clean the teeth of the moray, and the moray protects the shrimp. Seahorses are also spotlighted along with their unusual method of breeding. Each couple is monogamous for life. The female actually lays immature eggs into the male’s abdominal pouch, where they remain until they’re mature and ready to hatch.
Stops along the tour enable the participants to handle, touch and feed several of the Aquarium residents. Nutritional gelatin squares containing algae and vitamins provide food for the fascinating starfish. They have no teeth, but the acid in their stomach adequately dissolves their food. More substantial gel squares containing spinach, lettuce, algae, vitamins and yeast, are later hand fed to huge hawksbill turtles outside. Seven of the eight species of sea turtle return to Mexican shores every year to lay their eggs. Four of these species come to Quintana Roo.
Xcaret’s Aquarium personnel take an active part in protecting and patrolling a hundred-kilometer stretch of beaches along Quintana Roo’s coast. The method of nest protection is demonstrated and explained, as well as glass-protected views of actual turtle eggs in various developmental states. I found it personally amazing that most of the 120 eggs in each nest hatch within a day or two of each other, but not one of the babies moves until all the eggs are hatched. Then, as if on silent queue, they all begin scrambling for the top and their laborious journey to the sea begins. The odds are against survival of the sea turtles, only one out of 1,000 survives.
The scientists at Xcaret are taking various steps to help the sea turtles survive, for many of the fragile newborns never make it to the sea. Every year the staff, together with Xel-Ha, Sian Ka’an, and SEMARNAT, personally assists over 200,000 babies to the water’s edge. They’re also involved in a marking project, which tags baby turtles for purposes of researching their migration and habits. Two hundred fifty baby turtles are also kept at Xcaret for a year. The release of yearling turtles increases their chances of survival, for most fall prey to larger, stronger species during their vulnerable first year.