The Sobela Ocean Aquarium at The Kansas City Zoo and Aquarium opens Friday, after a decade of planning.
The 650,000-gallon attraction, named for the grandchildren of Shirley and Barnett Helzberg, houses 200 species of animals. That’s more than 8,000 animals in total, including sea otters, turtles, sharks and octopus.
Admission to the aquarium is included as part of a regular zoo ticket, thanks to the Zoological District sales tax. Residents of Jackson and Clay counties will continue to receive half off admission.
Sean Putney, executive director of the zoo, says he’s excited to open the aquarium for patrons to enjoy, after five years of architectural design and months of getting animals settled into the aquarium.
“Every aquarium tries to have a flow, and we chose to go from the beaches and the shorelines, down through the lagoons and the beaches and a little bit deeper,” Putney said. "We think it's unique, we think it's really cool, and we hope everybody that comes in feels the same,” he said.
Visitors enter the aquarium in the warm coastline zone, the first of six featured habitats. The first pool will have fish, anemones and urchins in a mockup of a Caribbean island. Cotton-top tamarin primates and toco toucans live amongst the mangrove trees in the habitat.
Sea turtles and small sharks will greet patrons as they enter the warm shallows in the second zone. Guests can see and touch giant hermit crabs, starfish and horseshoe crabs in a lagoon touch pool. This zone also boasts one of the aquarium's most lovable residents, Tortellini the green sea turtle.
Tortellini came to the zoo for rehabilitation after being hit by a boat, which damaged her shell. She’s recovered now, but has nerve damage that traps gas in her body and makes the back of her shell float. To help her swim normally, handlers have attached a sort of weighted backpack to her shell.
Putney said helping Tortellini is just one of the zoo’s conservation efforts, which includes funding and on-the-ground work for endangered species.
“We're about as far away from the ocean as you can get,” Putney says. “A lot of people who grow up here might not have that attachment to the oceans, and to the animals that live here, that somebody in California, Texas or Florida might have. But we are connected and we do depend on the oceans too.”
In the warm reef zone, patrons will be able to see a Pacific reef complete with five sharks, colors, sea turtles and rays. The sharks, four sand tiger sharks and one brown shark, were the aquarium's first residents, and were moved from the Georgia Aquarium after they grew too big for its exhibit.
The sharks were the main attraction for the Shockey family, who visited the aquarium on Thursday, ahead of its opening.
Ashley Shockey said her kids, Flynn and Wilder, are enamored with sea life and really excited to have a big aquarium so close to home.
“We travel a lot and we always try to find an aquarium wherever we go,” she said. “We heard that it was opening three years ago ... we've been just counting down the seconds.”
Flynn Shockey came ready to see the coral and, his favorite, the bonnethead shark. With at least three other aquariums under his belt, the 6-year-old said Sobela Aquarium is already at the top of the list.
“It’s super cool," he said. "It's my favorite aquarium in the whole world."
"Spokes-animals" for their species
As the aquarium's exhibits journey deeper into the ocean, the water gets a little colder. A giant Pacific octopus greets visitors to the cold shallows, which also houses lobster, leopard sharks and a moray eel.
The final exhibit in the aquarium, the cold coastline, features a touch pool full of urchins, sea stars, and horn sharks, but the main attraction is the sea otters. The animals were nearly hunted to extinction for their pelts but now the population is growing. The zoo is part of a program to keep otters that can’t thrive on their own.
Putney says the zoo started preparing for the otters five years ago. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which represents more than 235 zoos, regulates how animals can be cared for in participating facilities. To get the pair of sea otters, the zoo had to build an exhibit with plenty of space to stretch out. The zoo built the entire aquarium around those specifications.
The otters, named Owin and Matti, after sea otter conservationists Margaret Owings and Jim Mattison, were rescued and brought to the zoo by the Long Beach Aquarium.
“Usually what happens is they get washed ashore for one reason or another,” Putney says. “With that happening, they are either going to get euthanized, because there isn't anywhere for them to go, or they get designated to go to a zoo aquarium where they can be 'spokes-animals' for their species.”
