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The Adventure Aquarium, formerly the New Jersey State Aquarium, is a for-profit educational entertainment attraction operated in Camden, New Jersey on the Delaware River Camden Waterfront by the Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation. Originally opened in 1992, it re-opened in its current form on May 25, 2005 featuring about 8,000 animals living in varied forms of semi-aquatic, freshwater, and marine habitats. The facility has a total tank volume of over , and public floor space of . ==Origins== The aquarium was originally known as the New Jersey State Aquarium at Camden, and was operated by the non-profit (New Jersey Academy for Aquatic Sciences ), an organization chartered to run the Aquarium and further its mission of education and conservation. The current mission of the New Jersey Academy of Aquatic Sciences is to promote the understanding, appreciation, and protection of aquatic life and habitats through research, education, and youth development programs. The Academy was created in 1989, and oversaw the design and construction of the original attraction jointly with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority—the government-run group that allocates public funding for sports and entertainment attractions, statewide. Inspired by the success that other cities, particularly Baltimore, had experienced with their own marine life centers, the New Jersey Legislature approved the bill that included the Aquarium's construction order in the late 1980s, and Governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean signed it into law. The original building was designed by the architectural firm The Hillier Group, and became a gleaming centerpiece for a dull and virtually abandoned area. Constructed primarily of cast concrete, accented by large glass and aluminum facades and topped by a large, white fabric dome, the Aquarium was completed by early 1992, with a total cost of about $52 million. It opened on February 29, 1992. In its first year of operation, the Aquarium hosted 1.6 million visitors. But trouble arose almost immediately when visitor and critics' reviews turned decidedly negative and scores began to express great disappointment in their grand new museum. Some reviewers went as far as to call the Aquarium a "prison for fish", worthy of "immediate demolition". The building's concrete nature was glaringly apparent both inside and out, as bare, grey concrete walls defined almost every public space. The cavernous rotunda, capped by the classic white dome, featured a deafening echo and was poorly lit. None of the exhibits were themed, and many of the tanks seemed to be lined up in neat, square rows. Graphics were almost non-existent, and the building itself tended to feel small. But the death knell came by way of the animals themselves — as a New Jersey–based operation, the original Aquarium displayed only native fishes, normally brown and grey in color, and just about nothing else. By the next fiscal year (1993), attendance had plummeted to a mere 400,000. Alarmed, the Aquarium's managers began a short period of intense renovation, just a year after opening day. This was featured on Michael Moore's television series ''TV Nation'' in 1995. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adventure Aquarium」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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