Swell UK Here’s Looking At You Squid
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU SQUID
Earthquakes may rock the casbah, but they won’t rock the new giant aquarium in Casablanca.
Morocco Mall’s new Aquadream aquarium contains a mighty 264,000 gallons of water and houses around 3,000 sea creatures including sharks, squid and corals.Since the region is plagued by earthquakes, the designers had to make sure the tank could withstand tremours – and it already had to withstand two small quakes during construction.Roger Reynolds, chief executive of International Concept Management (ICM), said: “One of the challenges we faced was expected earthquake activity.”With Casablanca situated in a relatively high seismic zone, safety was paramount in the design.“ICM’s solution kept the aquarium as a freestanding structure sitting on its own concrete slab separate from the mall.”This cushions it against tremors and isolates it from any movement the rest of the mall may be experiencing during an earthquake.”As testament to ICM’s solid engineering and design, two small tremors rippled through during the construction of the aquarium without damaging any component of the structure.”While the design, manufacturing, and installation were all quite technical, we had considerable experience to rely on to do everything exactly as it should be done.”Seeing the finished aquarium and the excitement from the crowds when the mall opened made all that work well worth it.”Standing 30ft high qith a diameter of 40 feet at the bottom and 44 feet at the top, the Aquadream is the world’s largest conical aquarium.Visitors can view the aquarium up close and personal using the glass elevator that runs up the centre of the tank.Inside the multi million pound aquarium there are coral, fish, sharks and rays.The walls of the acrylic tank are around five inches thick.All 264,000 gallons of the salt water are filtered every hour.
by David Nash
Play it again clam: a video of the Casablanca aquarium
Tuesday, 10 Apr 2012, 9:25am
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