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The entrance to the aquarium is designed to whet your appetite for aquatic life. A whale is submerged under the pavement, sea otters play, and a waterfall rains down over the doors.
Once inside you'll find a Louisiana bait camp, with baby alligators, a touch pool, shore birds and delicate seahorses. Islands of Steel is a 125,000-gallon re-creation of a man-induced ecosystem living around the legs of an offshore oil rig (this is Texas, and big oil is good for the environment – especially sharks judging from the exhibit). They’ve designed the Flower Gardens tank to make you feel like you’re diving. If you step in just the right spot, you’ll be surrounded by 180 degrees of a colorful coral reef found 300 miles into the Gulf of Mexico from Corpus’ shores. The Amazon is full of aquatic and semi-aquatic creatures like piranhas and colorful frogs, complemented by their more terrestrial cohorts – macaws, parrots and snakes. Right outside of the Amazon is one of the most amazing things, 800-gallons of translucent jellyfish effervescing bright colors. Kind of psychedelic.
Outside, along the bay, are four resident male Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. You can see them perform from the amphitheater or get up-and-personal from the windows below. Otter Space features either the antics of North American River Otters or a game of ‘spot the river otter’ if they’re being shy. Out here you’ll also find some birds, American Alligators and sea turtles.
Easy to miss is the observation deck. It’s on the third floor, by the aquarium’s offices. Ride up in the elevator for good views of the sparkling harbor of Corpus Christi or the Harbor Bridge framing chemical plants stretching out into the horizon, depending on which way you turn your head. A plaque explains why you don’t see the offshore rigs you might see in Galveston or Matagorda – state law prohibits them within a mile of Padre and Mustang Islands. That indirectly tells you something about air pollution’s effect on visibility here.
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