Oregon Coast Aquarium

It was another grey and rainy day, so Henry and I decided to head off into town to spend the morning at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We love aquariums, and take every opportunity to visit one together. It's tradition.

Located in the shadow of the Yaquina Bay Bridge, we parked at the Aquarium and jogged with hoods up to the entrance to avoid the drizzle.

The aquarium was beautiful and well laid out, both inside and outside. We hadn't really anticipated a large portion of the exhibits being outside in the rain! 

We learned that the aquarium had been the original home of Keiko, the orca and star of the Disney movie Free Willie. He lived there for two years until 1998 when he was shipped back to Iceland where he was later released into the ocean.

​We did not see any whales in the aquarium and for that we were thankful.  The exhibits looked clean and the marine mammals appeared happy and well cared for. We enjoyed the outdoor exhibits, especially watching the otters swimming together, rolling around in the water and watching us right back.  

In the walk-through aviary we heard the puffins, with their expressive macaroni eyebrows, singing to each other, pottering about with their comical gait, and stretching their wings. Puffins are just born to stand out. We also saw a variety of oystercatchers, guillemots and murres flying freely inside the netted tent.

Entering the indoor galleries we found ourselves in a deep, dark underwater world filled with exhibitions of ethereal jellies, leggy stars, pink crabs, horses with curly tails and both local and brightly colored, exotic fish. We progressed in the semi darkness to an huge acrylic underwater tunnel titled Passages of the Deep where we enjoyed a 360 degree view of sharks, eels, rays, skates and a rather nosy grouper.

We smiled at the Pacific Banana Slug that had been elevated to the title of ambassador at the aquarium.

There was a lot of information and many exhibits on the conservation and I read as much as Henry would allow.

At the end we visited the aquarium shop and bought a souvenir T-Shirt for Kim that had a picture of a fish on the front with the word 'Salty.'

Nice. 

Definitely worth a visit.