Cretaquarium Tickets

Cretaquarium tickets open the Thalassocosmos aquarium at Gournes, east of Heraklion on the north coast of Crete. The visit is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville, listed with the other Crete tours.

This post covers the aquarium itself, its sharks, jellyfish, octopus, cuttlefish and seahorses, and the research centre behind it.

The deep sea off Crete, the best months and common questions come last. The sections include Cretaquarium tickets that can be booked online.

What are Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets open an aquarium whose official opening ceremony took place on 22 July 2006. More than 100,000 visitors had already passed through its doors by then. The plan allowed for up to 4,000 marine organisms, seen through 300 square metres of glass.

With Cretaquarium tickets, visitors enter a former American base site. From 1978 to 1994, the 7276th Air Base Group was the host unit at the Gournes station. An American air force hospital worked there from 1954 to 1993.

The Thalassocosmos buildings also hold fish-farming facilities, research labs and offices. Part of the school programme runs with EUR-OCEANS, a European network of excellence in marine science.

• First unit: The first American unit at the station, from 1953 to 1955, was a radio squadron detachment.
• Intelligence: From 1991 to 1993, the station came under the Air Force Intelligence Command.
• Philia: The fisheries vessel Philia, 26.10 m long, has a crew of 13. Its home port is Heraklion.
• 2020: Reports in 2020 said the United States and Greece were weighing a restart of the station.

Which sharks swim behind Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets show sharks from a troubled sea. The IUCN says the Mediterranean has the world’s highest share of threatened sharks and rays. In 2016, it found 23 of 41 Mediterranean shark species at raised risk of extinction.

A 2022 checklist confirmed 61 cartilaginous fish species in Greek seas. They are 34 sharks, 26 rays and skates, and one chimaera. Over the past half-century, 13 shark and ray species have vanished from parts of the Mediterranean. The shortfin mako and the porbeagle are Critically Endangered there.

With Cretaquarium tickets, the sandbar shark explains why aquaria pick certain species. It ranks among the safest sharks to swim with. Females carry about eight pups for a year, and the sharks live 35 to 41 years.

• Nursery: Bonjuk Bay at Marmaris, in Turkey, is a nursery ground for sandbar sharks.
• Deep ban: A 2005 rule of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean bans fishing below 1,000 metres.
• Sand tiger: The sand tiger shark, last seen in the Mediterranean in 2003, is presumed extinct there.
• Air gulp: The sand tiger alone among sharks gulps air, so it can hover almost still.

Which jellyfish drift behind Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets meet jellyfish of Greek seas, such as the mauve stinger. Unlike its relatives, it has no polyp stage. Its egg becomes a planula after 3 days and a tiny ephyra after a week. Swarms have been recorded wiping out entire fish farms.

A barrel jellyfish can weigh up to 25 kilograms, and leatherback turtles favour it as food.

With Cretaquarium tickets, the fried egg jellyfish is easy to name. It is the commonest jellyfish of its order in the Mediterranean. It carries tiny algae that make food from sunlight, and young medusae do not form without them.

Moon jellies rarely live past about six months in the wild. In public aquaria, they can live for years.

• Nomad jellyfish: This invader now reaches the Aegean coast of Greece and can weigh 10 kg.
• Power plants: Nomad jellyfish can clog the seawater intakes of coastal power plants.
• Kreisel: German for spinning top, it names a round tank whose slow flow keeps jellies floating.
• Inventors: Wulf Greve described the planktonkreisel in 1968, and Hamner adapted it for ships in 1990.

Which octopus and cuttlefish live behind Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets introduce the octopus, whose arms hold two-thirds of its neurons. Each arm can act with a degree of independence. Its suckers carry chemoreceptors, so an octopus tastes what it touches. A single common octopus clutch can hold 500,000 eggs.

The female guards her eggs in a den until they hatch, and then she dies.

With Cretaquarium tickets, Greek octopus fishing makes sense. In the Thracian Sea, trawls land the bulk of the catch. Pots and traps take the large ones. One fleet sets 800 to 1,200 pots, left on the seabed for 5 to 10 days.

Cuttlefish have W-shaped pupils and cannot see colour, but they sense polarised light. Their blood is green-blue, because copper-based hemocyanin carries the oxygen.

• Cuttlebone: This porous internal shell of aragonite lets a cuttlefish control how it floats.
• Sepia: The Greek and Latin word for cuttlefish now names a reddish-brown colour.
• Eggs: A female common cuttlefish carries 150 to 4,000 eggs, which hatch after 30 to 90 days.
• Musky octopus: This Mediterranean octopus smells of musk and has one row of suckers per arm.

Which seahorses hide behind Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets reveal the only two seahorses native to Europe. They are the long-snouted Hippocampus guttulatus and the short-snouted Hippocampus hippocampus. The genus name joins Greek hippos, horse, and kampos, sea monster. Their males carry the young in a pouch.

A short-snouted pregnancy lasts 20 to 21 days. The male gives birth to 50 to 100 young.

With Cretaquarium tickets, the long-snouted seahorse shows a placenta-like pouch. Villi rich in blood vessels surround each egg inside the male. The species can reach 21.5 cm, but about 12 cm is average.

Surveys at Stratoni, in the north Aegean, found short-snouted seahorses fairly common and long-snouted ones rare. The short-snouted ones turned up chiefly near artificial structures.

• Home range: A male stays within about one square metre, while a female roams a hundred times wider.
• Status: The short-snouted seahorse is Near Threatened in the Mediterranean.
• Trade: Fishers from at least 80 countries catch about 70 million seahorses a year.
• Pipefish: Male pipefish also carry the young, feeding them through a placenta-like link.

What research stands behind Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets support marine research with roots in 1912. That year, Greece asked Decio Vinciguerra of Rome’s Ichthyological Station how to found a marine institute. In 1985, the Institute of Oceanographic and Fisheries Research became the National Centre for Marine Research.

In 1948, the Palaio Faliro station passed to the Ministry of Agriculture as the Laboratory of Fisheries Studies. In 1965, it merged with the Hellenic Hydrobiological Institute.

With Cretaquarium tickets, the Institute of Oceanography is next door. It lists 15 permanent PhD scientists at Thalassocosmos. Its CretaCosmos test facility has two concrete pools of 150 and 350 cubic metres.

The research vessel Aegaeo, built in 1985 and refitted in 1997, is 61.51 m long. It carries a crew of 21 and sails from Piraeus. Crews service the POSEIDON buoys from it 2 to 4 times a year.

• POSEIDON: The sea-monitoring system grew in three phases between 1997 and 2011.
• Ferrybox: The first Mediterranean Ferrybox ran from Piraeus to Heraklion in 2003 and 2004.
• Faistos Palace: The POSEIDON Ferrybox now rides this ferry daily between Heraklion and Piraeus.
• Argo: The Greek Argo programme, launched in 2012, set out to deploy 25 floats.

Which deep waters lie near Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets sit beside the Cretan Sea, by volume the largest basin of the Aegean. It separates Crete from the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. Crete has a narrow shelf with a 1.5° gradient, then a steeper slope of 2° to 4°.

Its water flows out mainly through the Kasos and Elafonisos straits. In autumn 1986, the POEM-3 cruise found a large cyclonic gyre there. Brackish water of Black Sea origin filled the top 100 m of the western basin.

With Cretaquarium tickets, the deep mud is a surprise. Tiny animals in the deep mud were as scarce as in the deepest parts of the ocean. Below 700 m, bacteria made up over 92% of living matter.

A moored current meter recorded paired eddies, called a dipole. It controls the currents in the top 250 m.

• Microbial loop: A strong microbial loop in open water cuts the particles that sink to the seabed.
• Sampling: From 1994 to 1995, scientists sampled mud at 540, 700, 940 and 1,540 m.
• Food: Cretan Sea mud held less organic carbon than the Sporades and Ierapetra basins.
• Dia: The islet of Dia is also an EU Special Protection Area for birds.

Which months suit Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets meet a mild coast, where Heraklion’s average July high is 28.6 °C. Through the year, the daily gap between high and low averages less than 10 °C. The city averages 2,769.4 hours of sunshine a year.

In winter, highs and lows stay within 5 °C of each other. Heraklion averages 500.6 mm of rain a year.

With Cretaquarium tickets, an indoor visit beats a storm. Thunder sounds over Heraklion on 27.2 days in an average year. Hail falls on only 1.8 days, chiefly in February.

Heat can come early. The city station has recorded 34.0 °C in March and 37.5 °C in April.

• Record: On 24 June 2007, the Heraklion station hit 40.8 °C.
• New Year: On 1 January 2010, the port station reached 29.7 °C.
• Wet year: In 2019, the Heraklion-East station logged 929.2 mm, 331.6 mm of it in December.
• Dry year: In 2023, the port station logged only 186 mm of rain.

What do visitors ask about Cretaquarium tickets?

Cretaquarium tickets raise questions about the air base, dinosaurs, the name, other aquaria, towns and marine reserves. Detachment 1 of the 1603rd Air Transport Wing served at Gournes from 1954 to 1966. The 6931st Electronic Security Squadron followed from 1979 to 1993.

Who ran the old base by Cretaquarium tickets?

American air forces in Europe ran the station from 1954 to 1979. The Electronic Security Command took over from 1979 to 1991.

What is the dinosaur park near Cretaquarium tickets?

Dinosauria Park began in 2013 with 30 species shown inside the former base. In 2014 the exhibits moved to their own grounds. The models line a walk of about 500 m.

What does the name mean on Cretaquarium tickets?

Thalassa is Ancient Greek for sea, and the word seems to come from a Pre-Greek language. Kosmos first meant ornament or order. Pythagoras used it for the ordered universe.

Is there another aquarium near Cretaquarium tickets?

Hersonissos has Aquaworld Aquarium, founded in 1995 by the Scotsman John Bryce McLaren. It is one of only three aquariums in Greece.

Which towns lie near Cretaquarium tickets?

The Gouves municipal unit had 12,095 residents in 2021. The Hersonissos unit had 7,333, and the village itself 2,985.

Which marine reserves protect the sea of Cretaquarium tickets?

EU bird site GR4320011 protects the Dionysades islets and their sea over 174.86 km². Site GR4320006 covers Crete’s north-east tip and sea over 394.06 km².