iphone 5 or feed vibrant Lorikeets?

It’s 2012, and in addition to all of this year’s cool new tech stuff (including the iPhone 5) there have also been amazing advancements outside of tech, such as being able to hand-feed a Lorikeet in Portland, although they’re most commonly found in the Australasian region! Who needs an iPhone 5 when we will have nectar on-site so everyone can experience these vibrant creatures firsthand?!

click here to see photo gallery.

MILWAUKIE, Ore. – A new aquarium that will give kids a hands-on experience with marine life and other creatures is coming to Milwaukie.

Work is well under way on the 12,500-square-foot Oregon Aquarium (not to be confused with theOregon Coast Aquarium in Newport) at 16323 S.E. McLoughlin Boulevard.

If the building in the picture looks familiar, that’s because it’s the same one where folks used to go for a steak dinner – it’s an old Black Angus restaurant. The building has sat empty for a few years and a fire even broke out there in early 2012.

The aquarium is being privately funded and will be a for-profit venture. It’s slated to open in late winter.

We stopped by this week to take a look at the work that’s being done and talk to one of the partners, Ammon Covino, about the project.

Covino works at an aquarium in Idaho and is spending his days off here in Oregon getting the exhibits built, setting up the water filters and bringing in the marine life.

He’s working seven days a week in two different states, which is certainly exhausting, but he said it’s all worth it because it’s something he’s passionate about.

“It’s really tough but we’d like to get it open,” he said. “It’s just fun to do.”

The aquarium will be an educational place where kids can touch the sea life and even help with feeding. The hands on approach to learning is something that’s important to Covino, who has six kids of his own.

“Every exhibit we (will) have is designed for little kids to come up, put their hands in, touch the starfish, touch the anemones, have the fish eat right out of their hands and touch the stingrays,” he said.

Right now a shark exhibit, sting ray tank, puffin exhibit, rain forest room and much more are in the works. In addition to marine life (like hammerhead sharks, sting rays, fish and sea anemones), there will be the normal types of creatures you would see in a rain forest – tree frogs and exotic birds, for example. Covino said they also hope to get an otter and endangered sea turtle.

The final figures on the project aren’t in yet but Covino said right now he and his partners are in the $1 million range. While that might sound like a lot, he said compared to larger aquariums where the costs can run into the tens of millions of dollars at startup, that’s a pretty good price tag.

Why pick a vacant restaurant in Milwaukie to build the aquarium? Well, it’s on busy Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard for one and secondly, there are plenty of families in our area who might be attracted by having an aquarium right here in town.

“There are lots of kids that live up and down this road,” Covino said. “There are a lot of kids that live within 10 miles of this area. And there are certainly a lot of schools.”

We asked Covino what kind of response he’s been getting from the community and he said the excitement is building. Just take a look at some of the comments from the aquarium’s Facebook page:

Julie McMillen Sausville – I can’t believe you’re right down the road from where I live.

Erin O’Donohoe-Davis – Our kids are going to like this – can’t wait till you open!

Paula Kay Moore – So excited! I’ve already purchased my passes! Now when we don’t have time to go to the coast, we can have the coast ‘come’ to us!

Doug Davis – Bring it on, we are ready!

Megan Robertson Webb – We are so excited for you guys to open! My son is 5 and watches the show Tanked all the time. It’s going to be great having you guys so close!

Now of course with a new business will come new jobs. Covino said he and his partners will be looking at hiring around 30 to 40 people in November or December, just before opening. They have already hired an aquarium specialist from California to manage the facility and of course have provided jobs for a handful of laborers during the build, most of them local.

OregonLive Article Here

Ammon Covino stops by the old Black Angus Steakhouse building on Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard each month to check on the progress of the for-profit Oregon Aquarium he is installing.

Inside, the 11,000-square-foot building still looks like an old restaurant, except for the holding tanks set up for a couple hammerheads and stingrays from Florida that are supposed to arrive in the next couple weeks.

It’s a lot of progress for a building that Covino claimed in July might not even be the site he and his brother Vince Covino chose for the hands-on aquarium geared toward children. Since then, they secured a lease to the building and are hoping to open by the end of year.

Ammon Covino said he wanted the aquarium to be operational by November, but filed for permits from Clackamas County later than he wanted. Once he secures the permits, it takes only a couple months to bring in the animals and make sure they are healthy and ready for display.

“In 90 days, this can be a full-fledged aquarium ready to go,” he said.

In the meantime, his crew are stripping the wood paneling from the walls, tearing down the track lighting because most of the light will come from within the tanks and starting to build the tanks and decoration.

The building, at 16323 S.E. McLoughlin Boulevard in Oak Grove, sits on two acres and went through several incarnations of restaurant and strip club. Now it has a bright blue roof and a sign is ready to be installed.

Covino makes sure to mention that most of the people he hires are from the Portland area, such as the sign designer and most of the construction crew.

The aquarium’s prospective general manager, Steve Blair, comes from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif., where he was assistant curator. He will start with the Oregon Aquarium at the end of August.

They plan to hire about 20 marine specialists full-time from the Portland area.

Molly Harbarger/The Oregonian – The site of the Oregon Aquarium, 16323 S.E. McLoughlin Boulevard in Oak Grove, slated to open by winter 2012.

Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class holothuroidea. They are marine invertebrates with a leathery skin and an elongated bod. Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. The number of holothurian species worldwide is about 1250 with the greatest number being in the Asia Pacific region.

Many of these are gathered for human consumption and some species are cultivated in aquaculture systems.  Sea cucumbers serve a useful purpose in the marine ecosystem as they help recycle nutrients, breaking down detritus and other organic matter after which bacteria can continue the degradation process.

Like all echinoderms, sea cucumbers have an endoskeleton  just below the skin, calcified structures that are usually reduced to isolated microscopic ossicles (or sclerietes) {say that three times fast!} joined by connective tissue. In some species these can sometimes be enlarged to flattened plates, forming an armour.

from Sharks.org

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

This shark has a smooth skin (block-shaped denticles wide spaced but not overlapping). It has a rather short and thick snout, and its first dorsal fin is quite short and high, with the second being almost as high with a spine base over its inner pelvic fin margins. There is a shallow notch in the postventral caudal fin margin of adults, and the lower lobe is moderately long.

COLOR

Dark grey or grey-brown on top, and lighter below with dusky fin webs and dark fin tips only in the juveniles.

SIZE

At birth, the shark is 1 to 1.4 ft [30 to42 cm] in length. Males mature at 2 to 2.6 ft [60 to 80 cm] and females mature over 3 ft [90 cm]. Its maximum length is 3.4 to 3.6 ft [105 to110 cm].

HABITAT

Continental shelves and slopes, on or near the bottom from 164 to 4724.4 ft [50 to1440 m], mostly between 656.2 and1968.5 ft [200 and600 m].

DISTRIBUTION

Widespread in the Atlantic and west Indian Oceans, and the west and possibly central Pacific.

BIOLOGY

Prey - Bony fishes and also squid and crustaceans.

Reproduction - Ovoviviparous, with 1 or 2 pups per litter.

STATUS

Critically endangered regionally off Australia. They are target and bycatch in deepwater fisheries for their liver oil and meat, which has caused population declines.

http://www.sharks.org

Two brothers from Idaho hope to build a marine aquarium geared to children in a former Black Angus Steakhouse south of Milwaukie.

In a tour this week, a contractor gutting the 11,000-square-foot building envisioned what could go into the space: a puffin room where a kitchen used to be, touch tanks as you walk in the door, perhaps a rainforest room.

Vince Covino, a chiropractic consultant in Boise, said the aquarium could open by winter, but his brother, Ammon Covino, dampened expectations. Ammon Covino, the driving force behind an aquarium that opened in December 2011 in Boise, said he would prefer a building within the city limits of Portland or a bigger location, and that his investment group is looking at locations in three other states, which he declined to reveal.

“These are very expensive projects, and if things don’t go correctly, we don’t want any part of it,” Ammon Covino said.

Ammon Covino recruited Steve Blair, an assistant curator at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif., to be the aquarium’s prospective general manager. He and Blair said they will investigate the community and meet with the landlord next weekend before deciding whether to go ahead.

Clackamas County officials said they informally discussed the aquarium with promoters, but no paperwork has been submitted.

If the investors choose the McLoughlin site, Ammon Covino said they could have plans and a name within 60 days.

View full sizeMolly HarbargerContractor Shane Dietz stands in the old Black Angus Steakhouse restaurant, 16323 SE McLoughlin Blvd., where the aquarium might go. The building was also a strip club at one point before a fire damaged the inside.

The building, at 16323 S.E. McLoughlin Boulevard in Oak Grove, sits on two acres and went through several incarnations of restuarant and strip club. A fire that was suspected to be arson caused minor damages, so the Covino brothers sent some contractors who built the Idaho Aquarium to help gut the building.

Whispers of a new aquarium began circulating after a website with the name Oregon Aquarium went live. Specific information has been since taken down, and Ammon Covino said the name, logo and website are not necessarily permanent.

View full size

The aquarium, like the non-profit facility in Idaho, would be more hands-on and educational than most. Vince Covino said his children love visiting the Idaho Aquarium because they can pet and feed many of the animals. “They never seem to get sick of it,” Vince Covino said. “I have to drag them out of there when it’s time to go home.”

One reason for Ammon Covino’s caution in Oregon may be his experience in Idaho.

The nonprofit took about three years to raise the funds and settle on a site, causing concern for people who bought season passes early in the process. The Idaho Aquarium opened seven months ago, before the building was finished and all the marine animals acquired. Shortly after opening, one of the board members pleaded guilty to coral smuggling.

Despite early setbacks, the Covinos say the Idaho aquarium has become successful, drawing about 25,000 visitors per month, including school groups and researchers.

The Covino brothers and Blair says the two aquariums are not linked and won’t be, partly because they chose the for-profit model to speed up the timeline to open in Oregon.

While the plans are preliminary, John Chilson posted support for it on his Oak Grove, OR Facebook page: “Looks like the aquarium in Oak Grove is more than a rumor! We say awesome.”

– Molly Harbarger: 503-294-5923