The Loveland Living Planet Aquarium located in Draper, Utah, United States, is the abode to 4000 animals coming from 450 species. The public aquarium is made of three main exhibits: Discover Utah, Ocean Explorer, and Journey to South America.
The aquarium grew out of a project by Brent Andersen, a marine biologist in 1999 when two vans were equipped with educational exhibits and began visiting Utah schools. In June 2004 The Living Planet Aquarium Preview Exhibit opened in The Gateway Mall, moved to Sandy, Utah in 2006, and then to Draper, Utah to hold budding crowds and escalating exhibits. The Sandy location is closed, and the new location is soon to open, scheduled for March 25th. After a long wait, finally it is close to opening. Aquarists everywhere are excitedly looking forward to plan their next fun trip. Earlier the opening was planned for the holidays but since the project was not complete, the dates were further extended.
The aquarium’s education department operates two outreach programs: the Utah Waters Van and the Rain forest Van. The outreach programs visit over 450 elementary schools statewide each year, reaching nearly 50,000 students. Field trip programs for pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade and a teacher professional development program with resources for fourth grade teachers are offered.
The place is said to bring alive a 136,000-square-foot aquarium that will feature 74 exhibitions and house thousands of animals in 600,000 gallons of water. Now that requires a lot of work to be done. It is supposed to be the ninth largest aquarium in America. The crews are all busy painting a massive ship, polishing the floors and scraping out ancient prints in the walls. An aquarium as huge as this is sure to take you into a world of imagination where you believed in mermaids living deep in the waters.
There’s going to be two-story Journey to South America exhibit that impersonates the Amazon rainforest. It will feature green tropical gardens with a pleasant 76 degrees and 70% humidity. The weather will be totally different from what is on the other side of the glass wall. On the outside you can see the snow covered Rocks.
The tall walls have been hand painted by a Utah muralist,Billy Hensler. Billy has done the landscapes that are extraordinarily meticulous and all painted by hand. He says his favorite is the roots of the trees at the bottom of the rainforest. He also describe it as little eerie and a place he might want to go. Hensler’s landscapes will visually take you to an entire new world where you see 50 species and 2000 animals all at one place. Billy describes the project as, “super awesome, physical and emotional.”
The aquarium has things you would have never seen before. One of them is a walk through tunnel where you will see sharks. The massive glass dome holds behind 300,000 gallons of water. A place behind the shark tank will be for hosting dinners and wedding receptions where guest will get an under the deep-sea experience. Shark fanatics can opt for diving in the tank and also for a sleepover in the tunnel amid the sharks. The shifting of the creatures will soon be done and they will experience a home thrice as large as their original one.