Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
You'll start at the aquarium itself where a keeper may well be diving into the
exhibit, in a wet-suit and full scuba gear, to hand feed the stingrays (because
they're bottom feeders with flat, small teeth that crush rather than tear, they can't
be fed in the same ways the others are). Your guide will point out the different
species—puffer fish, clown fish, leopard sharks, lionfish (with venomous
spikes)—explaining a bit about the fish, and sometimes, the personalities of the
ones who live in this tank. As they tell it, keeping the aquarium is akin to being
a sheriff in a rough old western town; fish with “shoot 'em up” personalities brawl,
biting each others' tails and trying to claim territories for themselves in the artifi-
cial reef. Those miscreants who are too much of a menace to society are thrown
into jail. Well, really the isolation tanks in the basement, where you'll repair after
doing a full tour around the aquarium itself.
Once in the basement of Caesars, the technical part of the tour begins, which
anyone who owns an aquarium will find riveting. Here, the trainers—one of
whom came to Vegas after 14 years at SeaWorld in Orlando—are experimenting
with “green methods” of keeping the fish healthier longer. They'll explain their use
of gravel to house bacteria that will process the nitrates in the tank, and algae for
purification. If it sounds eye-glazing . . . well, it can be (though the fish aficio-
nados on my tour seemed really into it). But the tour guides are savvy enough to
move onto the tank where the outlaw fish are kept to tell their funny stories; you'll
also get to ooh and aah at the nursery tank where you may see baby sharks
squirming around in translucent egg sacks. We were also ushered into the “edu-
cation room” where the Caesars fish folks teach school groups and where we got
to touch some of the small crustaceans. In all, the tour will take about an hour.
For those who want their aquatic activities more interactive, the
Trainer for a
Day program
(at the Mirage;
%
702/792
-
7889; www.miragehabitat.com;
$
500
per person; children over 13 are allowed to participate)
is at once the priciest rec-
ommended activity in this chapter and one of the most rewarding. Yes, it involves
dolphins, but unlike most other programs around the world, there's no swimming
to be done. Instead, for an entire day from 9:45am until about 3:30pm in the
afternoon, guests become assistant trainers, learning how to feed the dolphins, put
them through their exercises, and give appropriate rewards. Despite the hefty pay-
ment and the gourmet breakfast and lunch (included in the cost), it feels like a
genuine apprenticeship.
Over the course of the day, participants chuck 20 to 30 pounds of fish to the
dolphins (and are entrusted with keeping each dolphin's bucket separate, as the
animals have different and strict diets); and learn a complex series of hand signals
that show the dolphins when they should jump, raise a fin for a handshake, or do
some other sort of exercise. Physically challenging—trainers and assistant trainers
spend much of the day running from one end of the pool to another with the dol-
phins following them—the program is not appropriate for people with mobility
impairments and would be agony for anyone who's at all shy. Because there's no
formal show here, the trainers, the participants, and their exercises with the ani-
mals become the show that day; you'll be learning how to deal with the dolphins
in a tight-fitting wetsuit in front of a crowd of people.
But that's what the trainers do, and perhaps better than any other such pro-
gram in the world, this one gives participants a genuine understanding of what it
