Calling all budding marine scientists: Dal's Aquatron research pool to hold open house

Before Transformers, there was the Aquatron — Dalhousie University's dynamic and evolving superhero of a marine research centre.

If it swims, floats or sinks, it may have been tested inside the Aquatron's laboratories and tanks since it opened 50 years ago.

The golden anniversary is being marked this weekend with an open house.

In past years, the centrepiece 680,000-litre pool tank has been transformed to replicate everything from the Great Barrier Reef off Australia — complete with kelp, sea urchins and lobsters — to Arctic conditions suitable for Greenland sharks.

Striped bass, squid, seals — and robots — have also done time in the 15-metre-wide and four-metre-deep pool.

"It's a shorter list of what we haven't done," said manager John Batt.

On Saturday afternoon, Dalhousie will hold a family-friendly community day to give the public a chance to see and feel the research underway at the facility — from the latest in high-tech ocean monitoring to touch tanks for marine scientists-in-waiting.

University and government researchers have been invited to explain their work, including how sensors track fish in the open ocean, and the impacts of a changing climate on marine plants like eelgrass, as well as kelp and shellfish.

There will be tours and displays of gliders and bottom-crawling robots.

"We said, 'Why don't you guys come out? We'll set up tables. Bring your research so people can come in and they can touch it and they can see it, and they can talk to the [graduate] students about it,'" said Batt.

Depending on the crowds, there is a chance to view another facet of the Aquatron: its role as a Noah's ark for Atlantic whitefish, the salmon relative on the brink of extinction.

The remaining wild population on the planet survives only in three lakes behind the town of Bridgewater, N.S.

The fish is so endangered, the young are now whisked to the Aquatron for safety whenever found and grown to spawning age for later reintroduction.

There are whitefish in around 20 tanks.