Friday, March 26, 1999

Penguins waddle in, settle down

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New aquarium welcomes its first animals

BY TERRY FLYNN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

King penguins line up for herring snack from Crystal Phillips. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        NEWPORT — Aquatic biologist Crystal Phillips, surrounded by 16 king penguins in the Newport Aquarium's first inhabited exhibit, had a ready answer Thursday for why she likes the flightless birds with the tuxedo feathers.

        “They are really cool,” she said with a grin and a pun.

        The penguins, the first animals to inhabit the aquarium, scheduled to open in early May, were definitely acting cool Thursday as they examined their new home, which is complete with a snow-making machine and 8,000 gallons of 45-degree water to simulate their sub-Antarctic ancestral home.

        Ms. Phillips, 25, is the penguins' new pal and will spend a lot of time with them as they go through 30 days of quarantine. She flew with them on a nearly 37-hour trip that originated in Japan, with stops in Alaska and Chicago.

        “They handled the trip really well, and came through in great shape,” she said. “They slept a good part of the time during the longest part of the flight, from Tokyo to Anchorage. They didn't seem to have any problems starting to make themselves at home here. They're just acting like pen guins.”

        The king penguins, the second largest of the birds after the emperor penguins, were hand-raised from eggs at Adventure World, a park and animal exhibit area in southwestern Japan that has one of the largest human-made colonies of penguins in the world.

        Some of the aquarium's new penguins had white plastic bands on their right flippers, indicating they were raised from eggs that came from South Georgia Island. Others wore black bands, indicating they came from eggs that originated at Adventure World.

        “There are very few con trolled large penguin colonies like the one in Japan,” Ms. Phillips said. “It's very important to be able to transport part of an existing colony, reared away from the wild, to another facility.”

        Penguins mate for life and breed only once every year or more, producing two eggs. Ms. Phillips said it is possible the aquarium could see some eggs in November.

        The aquarium has eight males and eight females, with the hope that they will pair off and reproduce. Ms. Phillips said one pair has already shown they are a couple and will remain together. Aquarium staff have constructed a penguin nursery.

        After the birds had been in their new home for a few hours Thursday and had a chance to inspect the rocky terrain and eat some of the snow (which is one way penguins get water), they were ready for a snack of herring doled out by Ms. Phillips.

        “They'll each eat about 5 pounds of fish a day,” she said.

        The $40 million aquarium, known as Oceanic Adventures Newport Aquarium, will feature 11,000 animals representing 600 species. Most are fish that will be displayed in nearly 1 million gallons of water, including a 380,000-gallon shark tank that allows visitors to walk through the tank in an 84-foot clear acrylic tunnel. headTHEIR KINGDOM

        The penguin exhibit area, to be known as the Kingdom of Penguins, is 640 square feet, featuring the largest single piece of clear acrylic at the aquarium — 29 feet long, 14 feet high and weighing 11,000 pounds.

       

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