PITTSBURGH -- Team 4 broke the troubling story last Friday: Eight dead sharks in the past eight weeks at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.

But that isn't all that has gone wrong at the 2-year-old, $19 million aquarium. Team 4 investigative reporter Jim Parsons has uncovered more disturbing news involving dead penguins and a leaking shark tank.

If you pay sales taxes in Allegheny County, then you pay to keep the new aquarium operating. So, in one way, this is a story about your money. But it's also a story about the animals that live here, and die here.

The following is a transcript of Parsons' report, which aired Nov. 19 on WTAE Action News at 11 p.m.

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When zoo president Barbara Baker took the wraps off the aquarium's new corporate name earlier this year, the trouble was already in motion. Nothing has changed since.

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Watch Jim Parsons' Report

The aquarium's showpiece exhibit, the 100,000-gallon open ocean tank, has an unsightly leak. Inside that tank, only one small shark swims around. Eight new sharks have died here since September.

At the other big crowd draw, patrons will find only three of the eight penguins that played here on Opening Day in June 2000. The other five penguins are dead.

Woman with child: "What happened to all the penguins? There used to be more than this."

If you are wondering just how important it is for an aquarium to have lots of sharks and penguins, just ask the folks who work at the Aquarium at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas.

Parsons: "What are they expecting to see when they come to an aquarium like this?"

Rob Jones, Aquarium at Moody Gardens: "Everybody expects to see the sharks here."

And they get what they expect -- sharp teeth and all. Big sharks, medium sharks, little sharks.

While most of Pittsburgh's penguins are dead, Moody Gardens, which opened just a year before PPG Aquarium, is breeding new ones -- 38 king penguins in all.

Diane Olsen: "This is Brooks. She's a female."

Olsen, a biologist, is in charge of the penguins at Moody Gardens. In fact, she took care of the Pittsburgh Zoo's eight penguins here while the PPG Aquarium was under construction.

Olsen: "We had them and they were great and we enjoyed having them. We actually missed them when they were gone. But they did very well."

They did well here, but not once they arrived at their new home in Pittsburgh. In late 2000, they started dying. By the end of last year, five penguins were dead.

Jim Prappas: "It doesn't surprise me. It's sad, but it doesn't surprise me."

Prappas was the orginal curator of the PPG Aquarium. Zoo president Baker fired him in July 2000, one month after the gala opening, accusing him of going over her head over the handling of the penguins.

Prappas complained to a zoo board member that Baker transported the penguins from Texas before their exhibit was ready. So, for 10 days, the birds lived in a refrigerated truck. Prappas and his staff were worried.

Rob Brown, former PPG Aquarium employee: "We were well aware of the stressful conditions those birds had gone through before they were allowed into their exhibit."

Ken Billin, former PPG Aquarium employee: "When a collection of birds sits in a truck in a parking lot for a week, you're going to see problems arise from that later on."

An August 2000 report commissioned by the zoo board, shortly after the aquarium opening, said the penguins "did drop weight as a result of Transport and holding," but added, "they are now healthy ... and appear to be vigorous."

But after the report was issued, the penguins started getting sick. Three of the older penguins developed a fungal infection called aspergillosis.

Baker: "Aspergilliosis is an organism that takes advantage of old age."

Not just old age. Published studies say aspergillosis is more often brought on by stress.

"When you have a spate of deaths like that, it's apparent something is wrong in the environment," Cleveland zoo veterinarian Chris Bonar tells Team 4.

Baker disputes that.

Baker: "Those birds died of old age, the natural attrition of the animals."

There's nothing old about the open ocean tank at the PPG Aquarium -- it just looks that way. Salt water is leaking through the concrete wall and oozing out along the window of the 28-feet-deep tank.

How serious is the leak?

Baker: "Our open ocean tank, we estimate, has a very small leak in it. This is normal, quite normal."

Aquarium leaks are common, but the zoo's own expert says this is no normal leak.

The zoo hired California marine biologist Drew Anderson two motnhs ago to assess the leak. Anderson tells Team 4, "It's one of the worst leaks I've ever seen, in terms of difficulty of repair."

Prappas: "Water seeks its own way out. That's just the way it works, so you never know where it's going. The sodium and chloride iron start to work on that rebar and they start to break down the concrete. I mean, salt water is the most corrosive material in the world."

Baker: "It's a one-drop-per-10-second leak, so it's not a hazard to the public."

Anderson says he shares Baker's opinion about the safety of the tank, but he adds that he's not an engineer. The zoo says it has not hired any structural engineer to look at the leak since the aquarium opened 2 1/2 years ago.

Parsons: "Are you going to take action?"

Baker: "We will. We'll be continuing to look at ways to seal the leak."

Parsons: "Do you have a plan right now to actually stop it?"

Baker: "We're actually currently developing a plan."

Anderson, the man the zoo hired to look at the leak, estimates it will cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to repair the ocean tank. Baker says she won't ask the contractors that built the aquarium to pick up that cost, saying no company can guarantee a leak-proof tank.