ATLANTA — If you have seen a whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium, you’ve been to the only spot in North America where scientists can study them up close.
This year, the Georgia Aquarium turned 20 years old. It’s hard now to even imagine downtown Atlanta without the aquarium.
Channel 2’s Linda Stouffer looked at the impacts of the aquarium since its opening in downtown Atlanta.
The giants that swim under the sea and other animals of the Georgia Aquarium have been wowing crowds for 20 years now.
Channel 2 Action News has taken you behind the scenes since the very beginning, starting with a $250 million gift from Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and his wife Billie.
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Outside, the Georgia Aquarium helps turbo-charge downtown Atlanta as a tourism epicenter.
Inside, dolphins, sharks and now a conservation bank for corals are just a few of the ways the facility brings education and fun to Atlanta and its many visitors.
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Over 20 years, there have been 45 million visitors to the aquarium, 12,000 events and hundreds of scientific research publications.
More than two million students have come face-to-face with the fish here at the Georgia Aquarium, part of an education program that extends to emerging science with the biggest fish,.
Travis Burke, the President and CEO of the Georgia Aquarium, told Channel 2 Action News that lots of research has been done at the aquarium on whale sharks, a mysterious species.
“There’s so little known about whale sharks, the majority of the research has been done here,” Burke said.
Burke said it was one of the aquarium’s biggest impacts.
“100%, our impact, being able to contribute to our overall knowledge of whale sharks, belugas and dolphins has probably been our largest contribution to the industry,” Burke said.
Ticket sales support the work of PhDs and conservationists, hoping the next wave of biologists might be inspired by the mysteries of the oceans, even hundreds of miles away from any coastline.
“Just seeing a child starstruck, just having a child see a beluga for the first time, a whale shark for the first time,” Burke said. “What we hope is that child will remember the wonder that they saw hen they interacted with that animal and that will cross over into their day-to-day life.”
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