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Island of the Sharks
The title itself is
enough to raise goosebumps: "Island of the Sharks." But wait, where
are the spear-wielding divers fighting swarms of ferocious beasts? Well, Island of the Sharks, premiering at
the Carnegie Science Center's Rangos Omnimax Theater on (date), isn't that
type of shark movie. In contrast to the numerous Hollywood movies and television
specials that have portrayed sharks as brutish killers, this film takes a
more mellow, mysterious approach with hammerheads that shy away from human
contact and sharks that appear to navigate by following the earth's magnetic
fields. But viewers with a
taste for excitement and danger won't be disappointed--just check out the
scene featuring silky sharks circling a school of jacks. Sensing the danger,
the jacks tighten into a frenzied mass, or bait ball. In a flash, the silkies
attack, slashing and skewering the fish with their razor-sharp teeth until
all that remains is a flurry of scales. Okay, it might not compare to the
horror of Jaws, but those jacks looked pretty scared. Island of the Sharks was filmed in the Cocos Islands, an
uninhabited Pacific rainforest 300 miles off Costa Rica's coast. Viewers will
also glimpse a wide variety of unusual island creatures such as the
funkily-named, pop-eyed larval lobster, the downy white fairy tern, the brown
booby, the convict tang, and the blue-spotted jawfish. In addition to the
cool underwater sequences, state-of-the-art, specialized microscopic
photography was utilized to film the beröe, a member of the jellyfish family
measuring no more than two centimeters in length. Described as "a stomach attached to a pair of lips,"
the beröe is a voracious predator despite its tiny size. A two-centimeter-long, voracious predator?
Someone call Hollywood! This could be
the sea monster that keeps people out of the oceans this summer.
The Requin: One Million On Board
More than one million
people have visited Carnegie Science Center's 1,510-ton USS Requin submarine since its September 4, 1990 debut.
Considering the sub held an 81-member crew, that's enough people to have made
12,346 voyages. And that's almost three visits for every one of Pittsburgh's
369,876 residents. Of course, not all the visitors have been locals--people
from around the globe have come to experience what submarine life is like. But on January 15,
2001, one Pittsburgh resident, six-year-old Tommy Ernst of Bethel Park, was
lucky visitor 1,000,000. To mark the occasion, Tommy and his family received
four round-trip tickets to the U.S. destination of their choice (courtesy of
U.S. Airways), a year's membership to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and
an invitation for Tommy and his friends to sleep over on the 312-foot long
vessel. Science Center director Seddon Bennington also treated the family to
"tea" at the Science Center Café.
"They thought we were pulling their leg," says Submarine
Manager Scott Kleinschnitz on the Ernst family's reaction. Camera crews from
local television stations, however, helped reality set in. So what effect do one
million people have on the Requin?
"The wear and tear isn't too bad," says Kleinschnitz. "But
some people do try to take pieces with them--whatever they can unscrew and
stick in their pockets. I don't think they realize how difficult it is to get
replacement parts for a [45-year-old] submarine." So come visit, but get
your souvenirs at Carnegie Science Center Store. |
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Copyright (c) 2001 CARNEGIE magazine |
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