This year’s big clean-up was completed at the İstanbul SEA LIFE Aquarium, one of the largest aquariums in Europe. During the big clean-up, which is done annually in addition to the weekly cleaning, industrial divers cleaned the aquarium comprised of 5 million cubic meters of water and 30,000 kg of sand to vacuum the sand area, wipe the acrylics and brush the stones and decorations. What the divers need to watch out for the most while they are cleaning the aquarium is the piranha living in schools and the sand tiger sharks the size of two humans, which are known to have one of the strongest jaws in the world.

The annual big clean-up has started at the Istanbul SEA LIFE Aquarium in June, where there are hundreds of different species of sea life, the longest ocean tunnel in Istanbul extending 83 meters, 55 sharks and the largest family of sharks in Europe.

At the Istanbul SEA LIFE Aquarium there are over 5 million cubic meters of water, 30 thousand tons of sand, giant acrylics made of 400 square meters of compacted plastic and over 15 thousand species of sea organisms. The aquarium needs to be cleaned frequently in order for the sea organisms to remain healthy. A large annual cleaning is done in addition to the weekly routine cleaning that is done at the SEA LIFE Aquarium. During the ‘Big Clean-up’ all of the water tanks and even the crustaceans are meticulously cleaned. The sand in an area equal to 10 beach volleyball fields is vacuumed step by step by a 14 person crew of divers and water engineers. With the area calculated for the acrylics the divers will have to clean, the work they will do is equivalent to cleaning 200 car windows. During the big cleaning the divers have to beware of predatory animals that are hard to control like piranha, which live in schools.

Divers dived with piranha, moray eels and sharks

At the SEA LIFE Aquarium there is a total of 44 exhibit tanks home to the world’s least known and attractive sea creatures, some of which are as dangerous as they are beautiful. There are puffer fish, tropical ocean fish, freshwater fish like Arapaima, a species as old as the dinosaurs, the sparkling seahorses, piranha, sharks, stingrays and moray eels. There are schools of piranha, which could even consume an antelope in a very short time, sand tiger sharks with large bodies over 3.5 meters and moray eels considered to have the strongest jaws of any animal in the sea, inside the water tanks that the divers dived into.