The Aquarium is open and has begun a renovation that will renew its main building to the core. During this project, the Giant Ocean Tank is undergoing a top-to-bottom, 21st-century transformation. Our Giant Ocean Tank animals have taken over the penguin exhibit during construction, and most of the penguins have been moved off-site. They will return when the renovation is completed in early summer 2013. In the meantime you can visit the little blue penguins in their temporary exhibit out the back doors toward the New Balance Foundation Marine Mammal Center.
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The Giant Ocean Tank is 23 feet deep, 40 feet wide and holds 200,000 gallons of salt water. The water is heated to approximately 74°F, which is a perfect temperature for this tropical exhibit. This tank is so big that it was built first, and then the rest of the Aquarium was built around it.
Animals
The unchallenged star of the exhibit is Myrtle the green sea turtle. Myrtle has lived at the Aquarium since June of 1970 —some of our adult visitors remember seeing her when they first came to the Aquarium as children. Myrtle shares the Giant Ocean Tank with more than 600 animals, including Kemp’s ridley and loggerhead sea turtles, a nurse shark, barracuda, stingrays, moray eels and hundreds of colorful reef fishes. Discover how the Aquarium gets fishes for the tank at the most recent Bahamas Collecting Trip Blog.
Habitats
The Giant Ocean Tank is a Caribbean coral reef exhibit. The coral was handmade and painted by Aquarium artists. This artificial coral is so accurate that it can be hard to tell the difference between it and the real thing. Coral reefs are found throughout the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans. Tropical Atlantic coral reefs, such as the one represented in the Giant Ocean Tank, extend as far north as the Bahamas.
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