Education Room
The Education Room is located on the second floor of the Gdynia Aquarium, and this is where you can see all kinds of exhibits of fish, reptiles, and marine mammals. Some of the most interesting exhibits include the Atlantic sturgeon, the hammerhead shark, the common dolphin, and the albatross.
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The Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) was the largest representative of native Polish ichthyofauna reaching a length of 4 meters and a weight of 300 kg. It inhabited the Baltic Sea and ascended rivers to spawn. Although a species that had survived for millions of years, it was unable to withstand overfishing and by the early twentieth century it had become virtually extinct in Polish waters. The sturgeon displayed in the Gdynia Aquarium was caught in the Vistula River mouth in 1972, and it is thought to be the last representative of this species to have inhabited Polish waters. |
It was previously thought that the Baltic sturgeon belonged to the species Acipenser sturio (European sea sturgeon), which inhabited the waters of southern and western Europe. Individual specimens of this species can still be found in a few rivers of these regions. Not before precise genetic testing was performed on preserved sturgeon from museums was it determined that the Baltic sturgeon population was, in fact, a member of the species Acipenser oxyrinchus, which today inhabits the Atlantic coasts of North America. This was great news since it presented opportunities for restoring the sturgeon population in Baltic waters.
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The Education Room is also where giant wall exhibits teach you about how marine waters are investigated, penetrated, and exploited. It's also a good place to discover how marine fish and mammals are distributed, and to learn about the anatomy, morphology, and ecology of many different animals.
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The Antarctic |
Mmangrove forests |
The Sargasso Sea |
The coral reefs |