Next to the Baltimore harbor, the two buildings of the National Aquarium, topped by Cambridge Seven's trademark glass pyramids, shelter many wonders, both in the water and out. Enter the atrium atop the main building, for instance, and you step into a mist-filled Amazon rain forest. Downstairs, you follow a curving ramp that descends inside a brightly lit Atlantic coral reef. In the racetrack-shaped tank around you, damselfish, angelfish, and blue tangs weave among carefully replicated corals. Farther down, the light dims, and you find yourself inside another tank, surrounded by sharks.
Kids love it here.
A sand tiger shark, bristling with teeth, gazes out with a white eye as expressionless as porcelain. Most aquariums, like zoos, present creatures from all over the world. The first major aquarium to specialize in its own neighborhood overlooks the Pacific from a rebuilt fish-packing plant on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The founders of the Monterey Bay Aquarium had a lot to work with, for local offshore habitats are unusually varied and support a corresponding diversity of marine life. This aquarium routinely makes history.