The young sharks have been taken to a “nursery” tank with some baby eagle rays, where visitors can see them before they are released into the wild.

Link (Photo: Richard Robinson)

Update (11/11/2009): The mother and her eight babies are all doing fine.  Link to Daily Mail story with video.

In 1940, Hitler, incensed by the successful bombing of Berlin by the RAF. ordered the construction of three enormous flak towers to protect the city. Soon afterwards, this idea quickly spread around Germany. 

Considered invulnerable at the time – and they pretty much were – many of these colossal structures still stand today, albeit serving much more "civilian" purposes:

The L Tower in Vienna is now, well, you take a guess. If your German is any good then its current name – Haus des Meeres is a complete giveaway. If not, then you may be surprised to discover that it is an aquarium. Instead of weapons of war and people huddling from falling bombs it now houses over three and a half thousand animals, with huge fish tanks containing sharks, turtles and piranhas (in different tanks one assumes). There is even a new tropical house with free flying birds and free-running monkeys.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

It’s a good thing that I’ve completely given up on aquariums (mine was cheekily named "The Last Stop Before Fish Heaven"), because this one by ZeroEdge is absolutely gorgeous. With its overflowing water, it’s what you get when you cross an infinity edge pool with an aquarium … Link

This awesome tank is found at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.

The main tank called the ‘Kuroshio Sea’ holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world’s second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.

The music is "Please don’t go" by Barcelona.

– via jonrawlinson

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by jonrawlinson.

If getting to the market is just too much of a bother to you, plus when you get there most of the food are from the other side of the world then there may be a locavore stirring within you.  Locavores are people who only wish to eat food from their own locality (loca, vore, get it?). It is becoming quite a movement.

If you want to bring forth your hidden locavore (and happen to have  quite a healthy bank balance) then the ultimate food source can be situated in your own house.  Design, environmentalism and aquaponics come together in Local River by artist Mathieu Lehanneur to ensure you will never have to go far for that fish and chips supper again.

From Mathieu’s website [Flash]:

The plants extract nutrients from the nitrate-rich dejecta of the fish. In doing so they act as a natural filter that purifies the water and maintains a vital balance for the eco-system in which the fish live. The same technique is used on large-scale pioneer aquaponics/fish-farms, which raise tilapia (a food fish from the Far East) and lettuce planted in trays floating on the surface of the ponds.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

“It really does look like something out of a horror movie! It’s over four feet long with these bizarre-looking jaws. Having done some research we also discovered that it is covered with thousands of bristles which are capable of inflicting a sting resulting in permanent numbness’.”

Matt believes it probably arrived as a juvenile in a delivery of living rock from another aquarium.

After being carefully removed the worm – which has been nicknamed ‘Barry’ by staff – has been re-located into its own tank, safely away from the coral.

Link -via Arbroath

Octopus have been famous for their curiosity and intelligence.  One California aquarium recently experienced flooding.  The culprit?  A female two-spotted octopus!

Staff at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California say the trickster who flooded their offices with sea water was armed. Eight-armed, to be exact.

They blame the soaking they discovered Tuesday morning on the aquarium’s resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed hundreds of gallons of water to overflow its tank.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

“Yesterday morning at around 9:30 AM, prior to the resort’s waterscape opening to guests, a 12+-year-old female reef shark jumped over an 18 inch wide and 1 foot high sustaining structure into the resort’s Leap of Faith water slide.

The Atlantis Aquarists believe the shark was startled by an unusual circumstance that we have no way of defining completely. In the over ten years guests have experienced the Leap of Faith, the reef shark itself, harmless to humans as it is fed regularly by our staff, had shown no previous incidences of leaping out of the water in the marine habitat …

The aquarium staff immediately retrieved the shark from the pool, but the chlorinated water had already poisoned the fish. She died shortly after. Link -via Simply Left Behind