Programs
In June 2008, the aquarium announced its "Swim With Gentle Giants" program. This allows divers or snorkelers to swim with the whale sharks. Up to eight guests are allowed in the water at a time. Generally, there is one dive and one swim every weekday, and two dives on weekends although the program is open to custom groups. There is some controversy over the swim program because two of these sharks died in 2007 while in captivity at the Georgia Aquarium. Some experts feel that the human contact would expose the sharks to exotic germs. Visiting divers are instructed to keep a five-foot distance from the whale sharks and other fish while in the in 6.3 million US gallons (24,000 m3) tank. Divers are also able to document their experience with a commemorative DVD.
Read more about this topic: Georgia Aquarium
Famous quotes containing the word programs:
“Government ... thought [it] could transform the country through massive national programs, but often the programs did not work. Too often they only made things worse. In our rush to accomplish great deeds quickly, we trampled on sound principles of restraint and endangered the rights of individuals.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)