Small Fry Look at Some Tough Fish

The halibut huddle in one dark corner known as the Halibut Hotel. The leopard sharks hug the bottom, searching for specks of food. The calico bass drift toward the top and beg.

These inhabitants of the predator exhibit at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, scheduled to open June 20, are like any new roommates. They’re learning to adapt to their new surroundings and get along.

But the most popular of the tank’s inhabitants is the bat ray, a cute fish with a puppy-like face. It elegantly floats near the front of the tank, exposing its white underbelly.

“When he’s upside down, he looks like a ghost,” said Alexandra Williams, 8, a second-grader at Long Beach’s Westerly School.

“The bat ray looks like it flies through the water,” said Michael Schiff, 7, also a Westerly second-grader.

The aquarium unmasked the three-story-high, 142,000-gallon predator exhibit Wednesday. It is one of 17 major exhibits and 30 smaller ones that will be part of the $117-million aquarium.

The aquarium will be the first of its size in Southern California, one that organizers hope will be as popular as the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Northern California.

Wednesday’s unveiling was attended by 40 first- and second-graders from Westerly School and several aquarium board members. The predator tank has about 65 Southern California fish, one-fourth the tank’s capacity. Still to come are a giant sea bass, barracuda, giant spined sea stars and other fish.

Perry Hampton, a curator at the aquarium, donned a diving suit and entered the tank where, using an underwater microphone, he answered students’ questions.

The subject: sharks.

“What do sharks eat?” one girl asked.

“Sharks are predators. So that means they will eat other animals,” Hampton answered. “We’re going to feed our sharks very well so they don’t eat their tank mates.”

Most of the fish in the predator exhibit were found off the coast of Long Beach or near the channel between Long Beach and Catalina Island.

The aquarium, which is the size of three football fields, will have 10,000 marine animals representing 550 species. The three major permanent exhibits will cover three areas of the Pacific: Baja California, the northern Pacific and the tropical Pacific.

Covering five acres near the ocean, the aquarium is a cornerstone to Long Beach’s future economic development, organizers say. It is to be the anchor for the Queensway Bay project, a multimillion-dollar development near the aquarium that will include shopping, dining and entertainment.