Denver aquarium invites visitors to swim with marine life

What was it that crab sang in "The Little Mermaid?"

"Under the sea, under the sea
Darlin' it's better
Down where it's wetter,
Take it from me."

You don't have to listen to a crab to be convinced. Take it from 13-year-old Josh Sizer of Colorado Springs: He's been to Denver's Downtown Aquarium on school trips, and it is way better to be on the wetter side of the glass.

"The fish are all around you," Sizer said after a recent scuba diving expedition inside the aquarium's 200,000-gallon tropical tank. "The moray eel swam right underneath me. The grouper, that thing was huge."

The aquarium has offered diving and snorkeling trips for the past four years. They are pricey - $175 for dive trips, $75 to snorkel - but where else in Colorado can you scuba dive in February in 75-degree water?

"It's the next-best thing to getting on a plane and going to the Caribbean," said Troy Juth, who owns Underwater Connection in the Springs and organizes local dive trips to the aquarium.

Divers can dip into either the aquarium's tropical tank (home to a Queensland grouper the size of a refrigerator, moray eels as big as boa constrictors and a 65-year-old sea turtle named Raphael) or head to the shark tank (home to, well, sharks).

"You can actually hear people's regulators start working - whoosh! whoosh! whoosh! - when they see the sharks," Juth said.

It probably says something deep about human nature that the shark dive is by far the most popular.

"When we bought the aquarium back in '03, one of our big goals was really to make the aquarium as interactive as possible," said Scot Hulgan, the aquarium's general manager.

"You can't get any more interactive than actually being in a tank."

The tropical tank is about 18 feet deep. That's only knee-deep by scuba standards, where typical recreational dives reach 60 feet or so. And, although the tank dwarfs any aquarium you have at home, it's merely a drop in the ocean compared with the open sea.

Still, aquarium diving offers attractions beyond proximity for experienced divers. For one thing, there are a lot of fish in one spot. The nurse sharks and jacks and eels and hogfish aren't going anywhere.

Nor do the fish seem to mind divers intruding on their turf - although dive guide Bill Tanner advises divers to give the grouper a little space.

"We think of this as her tank, basically," he said. "Just want to be cautious."

So far, there's never been an incident or an injury with the program, for divers or for fish, said Todd Hall, the aquarium's dive safety officer. That's obviously a good thing for the folks in the tank, Hall said, but it's an important lesson for the people watching the action from the other side of the glass, too.

"There's a lot of myths and misrepresentation about sharks and eels," Hall said. "When kids see divers in there with the sharks and they're not being aggressive toward the divers, it helps the kids learn early on that fish are our friends."

Those kids looking through the glass are often as entertaining as the fish. They press their hands up against the thick glass with awe as the divers swim inches away.

"The kids can be focused on a fish or a shark or a turtle and the second a diver comes into the picture, that critter doesn't exist anymore," Hall said.

And, if they're as lucky as Sizer, someday they'll get the chance to be that diver.

"It's much cooler being in the water," he said.

-

DETAILS

The Downtown Aquarium in Denver offers diving in its tropical and shark tanks. It also offers snorkeling in the tropical tank.

Cost: $175 for diving, $75 for snorkeling.

What to take: Nothing but a towel and a swimsuit. The aquarium provides all the equipment.

How long it lasts: A little less than one tank - 35 minutes or so - in the water, plus an hour of orientation and gearing up.

When: Weekend afternoons.

More information: Go to www.aquariumrestaurants.com/downtownaquariumdenver, or call Underwater Connection in Colorado Springs at 719-599-3483.