New Mexico’s Ocean of Sand Prepares for Sharks, Eels, Coral Reef : Albuquerque: A $22-million aquarium is scheduled to open in the desert next year, part of a national trend. Monterey and Baltimore showed popularity of such sites.

Sharks? In the desert?

“Why not?” asks Ray Darnell, director of the Albuquerque Biological Park.

“You’re not going to see cheetahs roaming the Pacific, but you’ll see them at the zoos in California. It’s the same thing.”

Opening day is less than a year away for Albuquerque’s $22-million Tingley Aquatic Park, the only major aquarium in a desert in the United States.

It’s part of a trend toward fishy attractions.

Five years ago, there were only 17 major aquariums in the United States. Today there are 26. Fifty more are planned, with some already under construction.

“Our citizens want an aquarium, and they are willing to spend their tax dollars to get one,” says Stan Wilson, president of the Albuquerque Aquarium Assn.

The only real natural water around here is the Rio Grande River, which passes by on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

But when the new aquarium is finished, visitors will be able to plunge hundreds of feet, if not leagues, under the sea.

Or they can climb aboard a real shrimp boat, wander through mud flats as the tides rise and fall, and meander through an acrylic, 40-foot-long tube as moray eels slither around their heads.

There will be about 28 tanks and more than 800,000 gallons of water.

The shark tank, featuring 10-foot-long browns and sand tigers, is being made with the largest piece of curved glass in the country--14 feet high and 48 feet long. And the coral reef, resplendent in colored denizens of the deep, will be a living, growing display.

All the accouterments of the sea, says Wilson, “Except the smell. There’s no way we can re-create that smell.”

Voters approved funding for the aquarium in 1987, when they passed a “quality-of-life tax,” a quarter-cent gross receipts tax that provided money for a variety of projects before expiring this year.

Planners hope the aquarium--due to open next October--will attract tourists and provide more cultural enrichment to the city of Albuquerque.

Jane Ballentine of the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. in Bethesda, Md., says the National Aquarium in Baltimore started the trend toward large aquarium attractions when it opened in 1981 amid a decaying waterfront. Administrators say the aquarium anchored the recovery of the area, and is now a popular tourist attraction that brought in 1.5 million people last year.

“People looked at Baltimore and figured if an aquarium can draw that many people in there, maybe it could work in their city,” Ballentine said.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California is another success story. Eleven years ago, the city’s quaint Cannery Row was dilapidated and sparsely visited. Since the aquarium opened in 1984, the entire area has become a major tourist attraction. Last year, 1.5 million visitors peered in the aquarium’s fish tanks.

“Our aquarium works because we are connected to our environment,” said Ken Peterson, spokesman for the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Tourists can see the top of the ocean from all over Northern California, but they need to visit the aquarium to peek under the waves, Peterson said.

Sarah Schirling, an associate director of the New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas, said the 5-year-old facility there is “another jewel in the crown of the riverfront” that only a few years ago was blighted with vacant industrial buildings.

Schirling said the aquarium is designed to interpret the Louisiana environment for visitors, a strategy that planners say is key to an aquarium’s success.

“In the past, aquariums around the country have been on coastal or tributary or harbor areas,” Ballentine said. “But there are people who live in the Southwest, the Midwest or Plains states who never see the sea, and yet are immensely curious about where their rivers and streams go.

“These can fulfill a lot of curiosity.”

The Albuquerque aquarium, along with the adjacent conservatory and botanical gardens that also should open in October, 1996, are the first part of a larger plan that includes a three-mile narrow gauge train connecting the zoo and Tingley Aquatic Park.

Planners also hope to add a $6-million “Drop of Water” exhibit at the aquarium that follows a single drop of water as it falls from a simulated thunderstorm, trickles down freshwater streams into the Rio Grande, plunges over dams and eventually pours into the Gulf of Mexico.

But that would take another round of voter-approved money. And aquarium administrators say they want to get the doors open before they ask taxpayers for more funds.

In the interim, visitors to the aquarium can watch a nine-minute “Drop of Water” movie before embarking on their faux journey through the Gulf.

The Albuquerque City Council and the mayor will eventually set the admission fees, but Darnell would like to charge about $6 for adults and $3 for children.

At that rate, the aquarium would need about 400,000 visitors a year to pay its own way. Darnell expects it will draw about 500,000.