Daily Sitka Sentinel

Improved, Remodeled Aquarium to Reopen

By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    After a month closed for remodeling, the Sitka Sound Science Center’s Molly O. Ahlgren Aquarium reopens to the public Saturday.
    Aquarium Manager Sandy McClung said the science center has “meticulously redesigned (various tanks) to really focus on different aspects that you would see out in the Sitka Sound.”
    “We’re really trying to change the focus and make this a top notch small aquarium ... We can do what we do really well,” she said.
    The aquarium opened in 2005, and bears the name of Dr. Molly Ahlgren, a Sheldon Jackson College fisheries professor who died in 2004 in a boat accident while responding to a rescue call as a volunteer EMT with the Sitka Fire Department.
    At the time of her death, she had already secured funding for the aquarium, McClung said.
    The redesigned exhibits will range from deep sea to intertidal.
    And at the rear of the aquarium lives the octopus Pearl, a favorite of aquarium staff and visitors alike. The larger of two octopodes exhibited, Pearl weighs about 44 pounds and can extend her tentacles to a width of 10 feet.
    McClung refers to Pearl as “the jewel of the aquarium.” The giant Pacific octopus now resides in a larger tank with a bottom viewing port situated at kid-height.
    “Live crab and live shrimp are her favorites ... she is very fun to watch hunt,” McClung said.
    But the original impetus for the redesign project revolved around the need for a comprehensive survey of the aquarium’s sealife collection.
    “That was how the whole thing started, was I wanted to inventory the tanks, and like ‘what do we actually have?’” McClung said. From there, the project expanded to redesign, remodeling,
    The redone tank arrangements, McClung said, offer “a very clear snapshot of the different ecosystems of our area.”
    Science Center Whalefest Director Alex Thorne wants the aquarium “to increase awareness of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems here in Alaska through education and research.”
    Revenues from visitor fees provide vital fiscal support to the center’s research activities, McClung said. The center had about 14,500 visitors last summer, with an individual entrance fee of $5 per person.
    McClung pointed to the “urchin barren tank” and touch tanks as examples of the thought processes behind the redesign.
    “The trick when we were setting this up is how to think of predator-prey interactions, who is going to eat what? So we don’t want sea stars in this tank, because they’re going to eat all the abalone.”
    While there are no sea otters on exhibit in the aquarium, the effect of these aquatic mammals on the flora and fauna of Southeast coastal waters after they were reintroduced in the 1970s has been dramatic. That’s mainly because of the otters’ appetite for sea urchins, which consequently declined in size and number where the otters were present.
    The “urchin barren tank” was designed to demonstrate a sea without otters, and also demonstrate impacts of climate change. As the name suggests, the tank is barren save for sea urchins. 
    “This is kind of an indicator of what the landscape would have looked like, looks like now actually in some areas where there are no otters at all,” McClung said. “The urchins, they eat everything, you get no algae growth, no kelp forests... And we’re trying to tie this one really into the research, the ocean acidification and climate change research.”
    The aquarium is open to the public 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays.
    Visitors can watch staff give Pearl her weekly feeding at 1 p.m. The entrance fee is $5, and free for science center members and kids three and under.