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Video hosted by Fred Mills. This video contains paid promotion masterpiece.
Abu Dhabi has built some of the most striking architectural projects in the world. And it’s not done yet.
Work is underway to build a record-breaking aquarium, one that will blow all others out of the water.
The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago holds approximately 19 million liters of water. With 49 million liters of water, China’s Chimelong Ocean Kingdom is currently the world’s largest – but it could contain up to 58 million liters when Sea World Abu Dhabi is completed. That’s the same as 23.2 Olympic swimming pools.
Designing and building such a large tank is an extreme engineering challenge. It has to withstand enormous water pressure, let in just the right amount of light for tens of thousands of species to survive, and immerse millions of tourists in the underwater world.
This is how Abu Dhabi built the world’s largest aquarium.
more than: Construction of Sea World Abu Dhabi. Image courtesy of PRNewsfoto/SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment/Miral.
Every year, millions of people flock to Abu Dhabi for its white sandy beaches, unique architecture and world-class resorts.
In the middle of it all is Yas Island, where tourists’ wildest dreams come true. It’s a 25-kilometre strip of hotels, restaurants, theme parks, shopping malls, a Formula 1 track… and soon SeaWorld Abu Dhabi.
When it opens in 2023, the sea life theme park will cover 183,000 square meters.
The museum has five floors of exhibits featuring more than 68,000 marine animals, including manta rays, sea turtles, reptiles and amphibians. Unlike other sea worlds, this one won’t have any orcas.
But it will have Endless Vista, a 20-meter-high vertical window stretching over several levels.
Now this isn’t just any old design challenge. The team had to build a structure that could pass through millions of people and create a habitable habitat for thousands of different animals.
The so-called “immersive” aquarium designs are designed to replicate natural environments, often including elements such as artificial coral or rocks, and have little exposure to sunlight to prevent algae growth
Abu Dhabi’s aquarium will be much larger than most. So all of these factors, from intensity to sunlight are amplified.
more than: A rendering of Sea World Abu Dhabi. Image courtesy of PRNewsfoto/SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment/Miral.
You might wonder why aquarium glass like this doesn’t shatter from the enormous pressure of millions of liters of water.
Well, large aquariums are not usually made of glass. Instead, they’re made from large sheets of acrylic called plexiglass.
This is because acrylic is 17 times stronger and half as dense as ordinary glass. It’s also more transparent than glass and easier to bend into shapes like curves, tubes and bubbles. Now, acrylic isn’t just used in aquariums—you’ll find it at your local hockey rink, inside submarines, and in airplane windows.
SeaWorld Abu Dhabi wouldn’t give us details on how their tanks are designed, but the Georgia Aquarium’s acrylic walls are two feet thick and have about half the capacity of the Abu Dhabi Aquarium.
Of course, there is also the question of how to get the millions of liters of water into the tank.
more than: A rendering of Sea World Abu Dhabi. Image courtesy of PRNewsfoto/SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment/Miral.
We’re not sure exactly how SeaWorld plans to do this in Abu Dhabi, but there are generally two ways to do it.
If the aquarium is inland, like the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, millions of liters of tap water are pumped into the building and treated to remove chemicals.
In Georgia, the team added 680,000 kilograms of bagged instant salt to build a brine tank. But if the aquarium is by the sea, you can choose to get water directly from the sea.
California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium—yes, the one from Finding Nemo—is located just off the coast. So they built two 16-inch pipes above the Monterey Bay seafloor to pump up to 2,000 gallons of water per minute into the building. Deep sea water is rich in nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates, which allow marine plants and animals to grow.
But it also means lots of barnacles, algae and invertebrates clogging the intake. So the team shoots large foam plugs in the pipes every six weeks to remove any growth.
This is not the first time the UAE has kept major new developments under wraps until they are complete. In Dubai, the world’s deepest swimming pool was quietly built under an architectural structure so that when it officially opened it dwarfed the previous record.
just a year ago SeaWorld’s press release says the new location will hold 25 million liters of water. Nowadaysthe developer said it is expected to hold 58 million liters.
It will be the first new SeaWorld sea life park in more than 30 years, and if the UAE’s past efforts are anything to go by, it will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Video presented and narrated by Fred Mills.
Additional footage and images courtesy of Yas Island Abu Dhabi, Miral/Sea World Parks and Entertainment, Georgia Aquarium and Deep Dive Dubai.
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