Aquarium tour | Baltimore national aquarium

The National Aquarium - also known as National Aquarium in Baltimore and formerly known as Baltimore Aquarium - is a non-profit public aquarium located at 501 East Pratt Street on Pier 3 in the Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Constructed during a period of urban renewal in Baltimore, the aquarium opened on August 8, 1981. The aquarium has an annual attendance of 1.5 million visitors and is the largest tourism attraction in the State of Maryland. The aquarium holds more than 2,200,000 US gallons (8,300,000 l) of water, and has more than 17,000 specimens representing over 750 species.

Exhibits

Level 1: Blacktip Reef. 🪸
This 265,000-US-gallon (1,000,000 l) habitat, replicating an Indo-Pacific reef landscape (living corals are exhibited elsewhere in the National Aquarium), can be seen from many vantage points, including a new floor-to-ceiling pop-out viewing window. It contains 65–70 species, mostly fish (including blacktip reef shark and Zebra shark).

Level 2: Maryland: Mountains to the Sea
This level features animals that are native to Maryland. The four exhibits create the illusion that the viewer is traveling down a Maryland stream from its source in the Allegheny Mountains, to a tidal marsh, to a coastal beach, and finally ending at the Atlantic shelf.

Level 3: Surviving Through Adaptation, Living Seashore
This level features fish that possess adaptations that are needed to survive in their various environments. For example, the electric eel has the rare ability to shock its prey with electricity. Featured animals include electric eel, chambered nautilus, and giant Pacific octopus.

Level 4: Sea Cliffs, Kelp Forest, Pacific Coral Reef, Amazon River Forest
This level displays several aquatic habitats, including a sea cliffs exhibit, which houses several species of seabirds; a Pacific coral reef exhibit; a kelp forest exhibit; and an Amazon River forest exhibit, in which animals can be seen down in the water and up in the overlying foliage. Animals here include Atlantic puffin in the Sea Cliffs exhibit, leopard sharks in the Kelp forest exhibit, Banggai cardinalfish in the Pacific Coral Reef, and Arrau turtle in the Amazon River Forest exhibit.

Level 5: Upland Tropical Rain Forest, Hidden Life
This level simulates the Amazon rainforest, and includes two elevated platforms for bird-watching and a cave of various glass-enclosed displays of reptiles, amphibians, and terrestrial arthropods.

Atlantic Coral Reef
This large 335,000-US-gallon (1,270,000 l) exhibit replicates the Atlantic coral reef, and is filled with more than 500 exotic species that would be found anywhere from closer to shore to out into the trench and open ocean.

Pier 4 Pavilion
This smaller building, opened in 1990, features the marine mammal exhibit, which is home to Atlantic bottlenose dolphins in a 1,300,000-US-gallon (4,900,000 l) facility. It also holds a temporary exhibit on assorted jellyfish called "Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out of Balance


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