Regional Museum of Natural History – Plovdiv will not disappoint Plovdiv residents again with its next interesting and educational event – a meeting with Professor Hristo Pimpirev and the team of the second polar mission of the Bulgarian military research ship “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”. The event will take place on Thursday, April 25, at 4:00 PM in the Museum’s Planetarium Hall.
We remind you that in February the new “Poles” exhibition was opened in the museum and the first ever “Ice Festival” was held, created under the project “Building a living exhibition Antarctica”, financed by the National Fund “Culture”.
The idea of creating the hall arose spontaneously, after a meeting of the museum’s team of aquarists with Prof. Hristo Pimpirev, and the goal is to present species from the North and South Poles there. This is the latest module to open in the museum as an exhibition area and is an important part of the team’s educational program.
“The hall will be dynamic and will be constantly updated with new residents. The project “Building a living exhibition Antarctica” aims to upgrade the capacity of the museum by building the first in Europe, and in the world, an exhibition of live specimens, rare species of fish and invertebrates from the Antarctic continent. The total cost of the aquarium is BGN 200,000, part of which is self-financed from the museum’s revenues. The project is innovative and includes several stages – construction of an exposition, delivery of live specimens of the Bulgarian polar scientists from Antarctica, holding a Festival, creation of specific content for the exposition and work with target audiences. The partner in the project is the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute”, said Chief Assistant Dr. Ognyan Todorov, Director of RPNM.
A fish of the species “Nototenia” from the continent of Antarctica already lives in the museum and has successfully adapted to its new home. The exhibition with a live specimen from the Antarctic continent is the first in a continental city in Europe. The aquarium in which the fish is placed is in an isolated environment with a temperature of minus 5 degrees. The water is purified by reverse osmosis and enriched with salt. Nototenia feeds on crustaceans. Scientists are yet to study the behavior of the fish.
“The necessary conditions have been created in the museum, which are: temperature minus one to minus five degrees, strong aeration and very clean water. For the preparation of the aquarium, they were consulted by scientists from Chile, who have a similar research aquarium. The newly built base at the museum, in addition to receiving visitors, will be used for ecological and biological studies of the species to be delivered, and the project from a museum-expositional one will turn into a scientific one. It is planned to include a museum team in the next polar expedition,” added Dr. Todorov.
