You can’t miss the Giant Ocean Tank. This towering, four-story coral reef exhibit is located in the middle of the Aquarium’s main exhibit galleries. Follow the ramp around the exhibit to explore this Caribbean coral reef top to bottom and from all sides. Don’t miss the top floor where you can look down into the water from above, participate in a Giant Ocean Tank Talk or watch the divers feed the animals.
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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 we opened in 1969—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, sand tiger sharks, barracuda, stingrays, moray eels and hundreds of colorful reef fishes. Discover how the Aquarium gets fishes for the tank at the 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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