Birth news: Three Subantarctic gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua papua) have hatched at the Oceanografic! Two of the hatchlings have had to get help from keepers, and more hatchlings are expected for the nearby future. https://twitter.com/Oceanografic_vl/status/1539643113710436359/photo/1
Birth news: Two male Short-tail nurse sharks (Pseudoginglymostoma brevicaudatum) were bor at the Oceanografic! This is the first time this critically endangered species has bred at the aquarium. Nacen dos tiburones nodriza de cola corta por primera vez en el Oceanogràfic de València
New species: The Oceanografic is now home to three Mississippi paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) coming from the sadly closed Bristol zoo. They can be seen on the mangrove section of the park's aviary. El Oceanogràfic de València incorpora tres peces espátula amenazados - Oceanogràfic de València
Yeah... those tanks are rather small for such a large fish. Bioparc Fuengirola has/had them; maybe that, or Zaragoza's fluvial aquarium, are a better fit for this species.
Massively off-topic, but I didn't deem it worth a new thread - however I saw it mentioned online several times that Valencia's dolphinarium was 26 million litres, which would make it larger than the Ocean Voyager at Georgia (23.8 million litres), nearly triple the size of the new tank at Nausicaa or the famous one at Dubai Mall (each 10 million litres) and by some margin the largest aquarium exhibit in the world. If this is true (which from pictures of the dolphinarium I find difficult to believe, hence why I am asking it on here) then why don't the aquarium advertise it as such? Surely having the biggest aquarium in the world is an excellent marketing claim which the aquarium could use!
I have no idea how big of a tank it really is, I doubt it's really the biggest out there. What I do know is that it was originally intended for orcas, that ending up being the benefit for the dolphins.
Cetacean tanks generally don't count when it comes to biggest aquariums. Even if it would count there are bigger fish tanks in China.
Teorically all the 4 dolphin pools has 10 m deep. And if I remember well 2,500 sqr metres, so more or less it's 25,000 cubic meters or 25,000,000 litres.
I've never been to this park yet. Are the dolphins visible outside the show times? Are there any underwater viewings areas? From the aerial views, it seems to be just 4 large pools and the big seating area for the shows.
If nothing are change until my last visit 2 years ago, the dolphinarium is open in opening park times, so you can view the dolphins when they are resting between shows. They have glass for underwater view, but it's hard take pics, because the access at this level are closed.
Heading to Oceanografic tomorrow for the first time and I'm curious as if there's any tips for the day out. Any specific species to keep a special eye out for?
Not the most spectacular animal but the exhibit of the spanish “gallipato” is awesome. A critical endangered amphibian from the Iberian Península. For an other part, the only aquarium in the EU With belugas i think. Have a nice day in Valencia
The park do advertise itself as the biggest dolphinarium in Europe, and the biggest aquarium in Europe, not in the world (but I think that claim is based on number of species/specimens and/or square meters of area, not volume in litres)
I visited this park yesterday as a part of a citytrip to Valencia. I got some mixed feelings about the visit to this park. First of all, I booked one day in advance and we had to choose a timeslot, only timeslots for 3 PM and later were available, so we went for 3 PM. We arrived a little earlier, around 2:30 PM, but we needed to queue up till 3 PM to get access. It still was very, very crowded. A lot of large families with strollers and screaming kids etc made it very packed and walking with a quick pace was impossible because people were constantly blocking our way. Since birds are my favorite I wanted to visit the wading birds aviary first. Arriving there it seemed we had to queue up again for about 30 minutes to access the walk through aviary because you could only enter with a guide!? Never experienced this in any walk through aviary I’ve ever been. We decided to skip and come back later. We went to visit the shark aquarium and the Arctic building with the belugas and penguins. Both very impressive and lovely to see all those sharks and rays. At the sharks you could also walk though an under water tunnel. Of course the belugas are unique! But also here all those crowds annoyed me, people pushing through with strollers, screaming kids and people everywhere. At every window there were 3-4 rows with people, so you had to make some effort to take a good look at the animals. Also a little disappointed when I wanted to take a good look at the tufted puffins because you could only see them from above in a pond or from below water level. Nice to see them dive etc. but impossible to take pictures as the room was very dark with a lot of blacklights. And I can confirm the stereotype when I heard multiple visitors say the puffins and guillemots were penguins ;-). Next we went for the dolphin show starting at 5:45 PM. As you could guess, we had to queue up again and arrive 45 minutes in advance to obtain a spot at the tribune. It’s a very large complex and it reminded me of the orca complex in Loro Parque Tenerife that we visited back in 2009. It was a nice show, very educational, so they didn’t do a lot of ‘tricks’ with the dolphins and it lasted about 15 minutes. However I think the focus on the educational aspect is positive nowadays I think visiting this show costs a lot of time for what you get. I would prefer to watch the dolphins behind the glass but that wasn’t possible. We needed to leave the area asap as they had to prepare for the next show. At this time it was already getting dark and started to rain a little, so we headed back to the wading bird aviary to give the visit a new try, but now there was a sign saying the aviary was closed because of the rain! Very weird. So next we went to the Tropical aquarium building with a lot of tropical sea life, also a lot of sea turtles. Again nice large aquariums also with a walk through tunnel. I really can’t say a lot of the specific species, because I am not really into sea life, but I think it was quite diverse! Signs are unable to read because of the crowds blocking it ;-). We finished our visit by walking around a little till it was getting to dark outside. The park was open till 9 PM, but at 7 PM it was already dark, so a little weird, but for for the inside enclosures not a problem of course. So overall it’s a very modern park with very nice enclosures and a lot of aquatic animal species, but with the crowds it felt like it’s going down through it’s own success. The area is quite small and a lot of enclosures/aquariums are under ground. With so much visitors it gives a very packed feeling. In every building there were also a lot of employees to correct people constantly who are taking pictures with flash, blocking the way with strollers, kids banging on the glass etc. I believe it’s the number 1 activity in this city and it attracts a lot of families. (I never understand why so many families with very young children - baby/toddler age - visit these places so often, since they show little to no interest in the animals. But hey, maybe that’s the age to start zoo enthousiasm? ). Someone mentioned before that they should advertise with the size of their large dolphin pool. I think it’s not necessary because I believe the marketing machine is already running well . I found the price for a ticket very high, it was 40,50 euro per person. Even some top zoos like Pairi Daiza or Beauval are lower in price. I got the feeling the parks purpose is to proces as much people as they can. I also got this feeling at Lori Parque back in the days when you had to walk from show to show. .
Just gotta say that you might have picked one of the worst weekends to visit any major Spanish zoo, the Semana Santa Thursday, Friday and weekend are infamous for crowding zoos ahaha, I'm not sure how crowded it could be in a normal weekend since I sadly haven't visited yet, but I'm pretty sure the amount of people has been influenced by the date as well. Damn, 40 euros for a ticket is very much outrageous. Spanish zoo entrances are incredibly expensive, I paid 30+ euros to enter TerraNatura Benidorm for example.
