Courtesy National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium
National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium
Dubuque, Iowa
The fish, reptiles and mammals of the Mississippi River take center stage at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, an institution that is accredited as both an aquarium and a museum.
“We’re located right on the Mississippi River in Dubuque,” said marketing and sales director John Sutter. “We explore all aspects of the Mississippi River. We have two buildings: the Mississippi River Discovery Center and the National River Center.”
The riverfront location serves as the perfect backdrop for a museum and aquarium that showcases the wildlife of America’s waterways. Visitors will find cultural and historical exhibits at the museum, as well as living collections. The aquarium houses fish of the Mississippi River, otters, beavers and red-tailed hawks.
“The visitor experience is really immersive,” Sutter said. “The first aquarium is our backwater marsh. It’s an open-air aquarium; you can get within inches of the animals in that exhibit.”
As the Mississippi and other rivers empty into the Gulf of Mexico, the aquarium also features some coastal animals and marine creatures. Guests will see nurse sharks, horseshoe crabs, octopuses and sea stars.
“We have the Gulf of Mexico Aquarium, which is 30,000 gallons of salt water,” Sutter said. “It’s a parabolic-shaped tank. You can walk to the center of that and feel like you’re underwater.”
One highlight of the institution is the Wet Lab, where groups can have hands-on experiences with lake sturgeons. Educational programs there also include up-close interactions with crayfishes, snails, leeches and some larger animals.
This year, the museum debuted a new outdoor plaza that connects its two main buildings. The riverfront plaza has two aviaries, and a “living stream” serves as a sort of outdoor aquarium.
www.mississippirivermuseum.com
Sea Life Aquarium
Kansas City, Missouri
For years, the Crown Center has been a favorite visitor destination in downtown Kansas City. This year, the attraction grew even stronger when Crown Center welcomed Sea Life Aquarium.
“We are about a 28,000-square-foot aquarium, with 260,000 gallons of water,” said Mendy Rose, marketing manager at the aquarium. “We have over 30 displays with over 5,000 creatures.”
This isn’t the first Sea Life Aquarium in the Midwest; there’s one in Minnesota’s Mall of America. The New Zealand-based company has built a total of five aquariums in the United States, plus 30 more in foreign countries. All that experience has helped it develop a knack for highly interactive exhibits that emphasize visitor fun.
“It’s designed to be a more interactive, immersive experience,” Rose said. “Some larger aquariums feel more like museums, but ours are highly themed and interactive. We have a touch-pool experience, where guests can touch creatures that they would find at the beach at low tide. We also have various educational talks and feedings throughout the day.”
The aquarium’s exhibits are designed to introduce visitors to both local animals and more exotic sea life.
“The whole theme of the attraction is that you start with a freshwater tank with fish that you would find in Missouri rivers and lakes,” Rose said. “Then you go on an excursion down the Mississippi River through New Orleans, a shipwreck experience, and into the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean.
At the center of the aquarium is a 130,000-gallon ocean tank that features various species of tropical fish, stingrays and sharks. To reach the exhibit, visitors walk through an ocean tunnel, where they can see the marine animals swimming above and around them.
www.visitsealife.com/kansas-city/
Shedd Aquarium
Chicago
Since it opened in 1930, the 82-year-old Shedd Aquarium has become one of Chicago’s predominant attractions.
“We’ve been the most-attended cultural attraction in Chicago for 14 of the last 17 years,” said public relations manager Melissa Kruth. “We have 32,500 animals representing 1,500 species. That’s one of the most diverse collections of any aquarium in the world.”
Four of the aquarium’s core exhibits date back to its 1930 opening. Caribbean Reef, a 70,000-gallon warm-water habitat is home to Nickel, a green sea turtle that has become something of a mascot for the aquarium. Another original exhibit, Waters of the World, features an Australian lungfish named Granddad that has lived at the aquarium since 1933.
One of the newer exhibits is Amazon Rising, which takes visitors through the rise and fall of the river water during the different seasons of the Amazon rain forest. Wild Ocean Reef features the aquarium’s collection of sharks swimming in a large tank that sweeps over the top of the visitor viewing area.
One of the most significant exhibits is the Oceanarium.
“That exhibit was built in 1990 and doubled the size of our aquarium,” Kruth said. “It’s set in the Pacific Northwest, so you have a lot of tall trees and rock work to make you feel like you’re on the Northwest coast. It’s where our beluga whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins, sea lions and sea otters live.”
In April of 2011, the aquarium opened a new temporary exhibit on sea jellies. The exhibit was scheduled to run through the end of last year; due to its overwhelming popularity, however, Jellies has been extended through 2013.
