Together with animals that look like plants and plants unlike any on land, they challenge our concepts of what it means to be an animal, of what it means to be alive. The people looking at them are delighted to finally see a live seahorse or to find out what a shrimp actually is before it ends up on a dinner plate or better yet to learn what that funny looking blob on the beach that they have wondered about for years really is in our aquariums. Water tables and holding tanks range from 10,000 gallons, the largest, to 3,000 gallons and many touch tanks that are 500 gallons and under. All together over 30,000 gallons of sea water is contained in a large number of aquariums and special touch tanks. At any given time, between one and two hundred species are present.
Invertebrates are our specialty.
They make up the overwhelming majority of life in the ocean, and you'll be able to see a wide array of sponges, anemones, starfish, sea cucumbers, crabs, lobsters and tunicates. Often we have sea turtles that are being held for rehabilitation. Unlike the large public aquariums, these are not static exhibits. Shrimpers, crabbers, gill-net fishermen, and our own collecting staff bring in a constant flow of new creatures. Touch Tanks Visitors can see and handle life forms that they have never before encountered, such as sea anemones, urchins, octopuses, shrimp and estuarine fish.