{"id":9276,"date":"2010-11-16T11:30:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T16:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/?p=9276"},"modified":"2014-02-15T12:23:17","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T17:23:17","slug":"sea-lions-receive-unique-eye-surgery-aquarium-trying-for-pepsi-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/16\/sea-lions-receive-unique-eye-surgery-aquarium-trying-for-pepsi-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea Lions Receive Unique Eye Surgery, Aquarium trying for Pepsi grant"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard about this originally this morning on the Buffalo NPR station<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From WKBW Channel 7 in Buffalo (includes a video):<\/p>\n

In Niagara Falls, the term “Cataract City’ takes on new meaning after two sea lions become the first in the area to receive a unique eye surgery.<\/p>\n

Thousands of guests come to the Aquarium of Niagara every year to see the sea lions. The problem was, the sea lions couldn’t see them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although not mentioned in either story, this got me thinking about the news a couple of weeks ago about the Aquarium being in the running for a Pepsi grant. Someone emailed me a link to a Niagara Gazette article<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Aquarium of Niagara is hoping a boost in public support will help it win a competitive $50,000 grant to create a living coral reef.<\/p>\n

The grant being administered through the Pepsi Refresh project allocates funding to different organizations, individuals or ideas based on the number of votes the project receives in a one-month period.<\/p>\n

Aquarium Director of Development Gay B. Molnar said the aquarium hosts 235,000 visitors annually and is in dire need of votes from residents across Niagara and Eric counties.<\/p>\n

If awarded, the grant would aid in educating visitors about environmental and economic importance of reefs, establish a coral research and propagation\/reproduction program and educate visitors about how recent climate changes are a severe threat to the existence of coral reefs \u2014 all in an 800-gallon living reef exhibit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The person who emailed me this went on to say:<\/p>\n

I wanted to make you aware of an issue\/store happening on the USA side of the Falls. I think it would be worthwhile to post it to your blog…in an effort to get as many people aware of it as possible.<\/p>\n

I just thought it would be very beneficial for readers to be made aware of this.\u00a0 As you can see from the story, 10 attractions will be getting $50,000 grant based on the number of votes. To have readers in Buffalo\/Niagara be made aware of this and try to push the NF aquarium up to get one of the grants would be a good idea.<\/p>\n

Any funding\/money that comes into our area for attractions can be nothing but a good thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard about this originally this morning on the Buffalo NPR station. From WKBW Channel 7 in Buffalo (includes a video): In Niagara Falls, the term “Cataract City’ takes on new meaning after two sea lions become the first in the area to receive a unique eye surgery. Thousands of guests come to the Aquarium…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,54,2],"tags":[98,4261,1996,4725,4722,4723,4727,561,4728,4724,4726,3220],"class_list":["post-9276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niagara-falls-attractions","category-niagara-falls-new-york","category-niagara-falls-news","tag-aquarium","tag-buffalo-niagara","tag-cataract","tag-coral-reef","tag-coral-reefs","tag-coral-research","tag-eye-surgery","tag-niagara-gazette","tag-pepsi","tag-reef-exhibit","tag-sea-lions","tag-wkbw-channel-7"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9277,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions\/9277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}