Ted’s Fishroom

A Visit to

The Seattle Aquarium

My wife and I went to a friend’s wedding in Seattle in November 2007, and scheduled an extra day to go to the aquarium there. I had heard very good comments about this aquarium, and I was not let down. I think that the Seattle Aquarium is one of the top ten aquariums I have been too.

The facility is located on the wharf, downtown in the area where all the tourist attractions and stuff are at. It is built over the water in what was originally a port pier. They did a great jog of making the buildings blend in with the area. Here is a view of the aquarium from outside.

The aquarium is divided into two buildings. The building you enter into has an area dedicated to the fish of Puget Sound and another area dedicated to tropical coral reef fishes. This building also houses the gift shop and restaurant. We did not eat at the aquarium, but I have been told that the food is quite good. After paying the entrance fee you enter a large open area. At the end of the room is a huge Puget Sound display tank featuring fish from the area. While we were there there was a diver demonstration going on. This tank is a new addition to the aquarium, and many fo the fish are still small.

Past that large tank you will pass through a hallway with a rocky coast tank display. This is a cool set up. The rock wall extends up from the floor, and the bottom half is enclosed in glass with water. The display has mostly invertebrates that that are attaced to the rock surfaces. There are some monsterous startfish and anemones in this tank. Water surges through the display in a wave action. While we were there the curator (in the ladder in the picture) was feeding the huge anemones pieces of fish.

The room at the end of the hallway houses displays showing other features of Puget Sound. There are a couple tidal pool touch tanks and plenty of staff to help the kids enjoy them. There is one of the largest and nicest looking giant octopus displays I have seen, and a cool moon jellyfish tank that arches over a walkway. This room is very open and there is not much a traffic flow pattern. It is quite dark, which makes photography difficult, so several of the pictures I snapped did not turn out.

The Seattle Aquarium has a lot of interesting art and interactive displays.

The back half of this first building is dedicated to coral reef displays. They do a good job of using many small tanks rather than trying to maintain a few really big reef tanks. They do have some bigger displays, but the smaller aquaria lets them show a wider variety of creatures that might not be able to coexist. Though most of the tanks have live corals, the largest tank is dedicated to larger reef fish that damage corals.

The second building houses more displays that show more of the wildlife of the Puget Sound and the Pacific Northwest. The first section is an open air display of a sandy coast. There are birds and fish in this dislpay. It is immediately apparent that the sand ecosystem is not as diverse as the rocky coastline biotope. Thre are a number of flatfish in the sand display, however, and seeing how well they camoflage themselves is pretty cool.

When you actually enter the building there are a series of smaller aquaria that show more of the organisms of Puget Sound. These tanks are very cool from an aquarist’s perspective, because they showcase the small fish and invertebrates from the ecosystem. A cold water aquarium with these species would be neat to maintain.

My favorite display in the Seattle Aquarium is a huge, circular aquarium that is viewed from the interior. You walk through a short halway that goes through the aquarium, and then you view the fish from inside a dome. The fish move from below your feet to above your head! There are a lot a salmonids in this tank, and a huge wolf eel!

The salmon fishery is important in the economy and history of the Pacific Northwest. The aquarium highlights the salmon with some nice displays. The aquarium operates a small hatchery that releases salmon into Puget Sound each year, and there is a fish ladder on the building that salmon use when they return after four or five years in the wild. I would like to go back during the time of year when the salmon are returning to see them swim up this ladder.

What is an aquarium on the west coast of North America without marine mammals? Incomplete… the Seattle Aquarium has a very nice mammal display. There are fur seals (which I had never seen in a zoo or aquarium before), sea otters and a nice video display on the orca pods that live in Puget Sound. This area is open air, and there is a nice overlook into the entire area. While we were there they were feeding the otters. That meant that there were a hundred or more people crowded around the enclosure and I could not get a picture.

That concludes the tour of the Seattle Aquarium. There is a lot more to see there than what I was able to include in this tour, so take a trip out to Seattle and see it for yourself. Besides the aquarium the area has a lot of fun things to see and do, as well as some of the best seafood ANYWHERE. We are already planning a trip back, and will take a couple days to visit Vancouver and see the aqurium in that city as well.

Please feel free to make comments about this tour or tell us about your visit to the Seattle Aquarium. Please keep it clean or I will have ot edit your post!