The National Aquarium—also known as the National Aquarium in Baltimore or Baltimore Aquarium—is a nonprofit public aquarium located at 501 East Pratt Street on Pier 3 in the Inner Harbor area of Downtown Baltimore, Maryland, 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 of water, and has more than 17,000 specimens representing over 750 species. The National Aquarium's mission is to inspire conservation of the world's aquatic treasures. The aquarium's stated vision is to confront pressing issues facing global aquatic habitats through pioneering science, conservation, and educational programming.
The National Aquarium houses several exhibits including the Upland Tropical Rain Forest, a multiple-story Atlantic Coral Reef, an open-ocean shark tank, and Australia: Wild Extremes, which won the "Best Exhibit" award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2008. The aquarium also has a "4D Immersion Theater." The aquarium opened a marine mammal pavilion on the adjacent south end of Pier 4 in 1990, and currently holds six Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Of the six, five were born at the National Aquarium, one was born at another American aquarium.
In 2003, the National Aquarium and the much older and independent National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., formed an alliance to operate as a single National Aquarium with two sites. This arrangement continued until 2013, when the Washington location closed permanently.
History The aquarium began in the mid-1970s when then-mayor William Donald Schaefer, and the Commissioner of the city Department of Housing and Community Development, Robert C. Embry, inspired by a visit to the New England Aquarium on the waterfront of Boston, Massachusetts, conceived and championed the idea of an aquarium as a vital component of Baltimore's overall downtown and Inner Harbor redevelopment scheme. In 1976, Baltimore City residents supported the idea of an aquarium by voting for it on a bond loan referendum, and the groundbreaking for the facility took place on old Pier 3 facing East Pratt Street, just east of the newly completed World Trade Center in the city's Inner Harbor on August 8, 1978.
Although no federal funds were used for its construction, the United States Congress later designated the facility as the "national aquarium" in 1979. The aquarium opened to the public on August 8, 1981, after three years of construction, and one year after the booming festival marketplace of the two Harborplace shopping pavilions further west conceived by nationally famous, local developer James Rouse.
The National Aquarium, Baltimore's initial conceptual design, architecture and exhibit design was led by Peter Chermayeff of Peter Chermayeff LLC while he was at CambridgeSeven. The conceptual, architectural, and exhibit design for the Glass Pavilion expansion was led by Bobby C. Poole while at Chermayeff, Sollogub & Poole. After two decades, construction began on the Glass Pavilion north extension on September 5, 2002, and it opened to the public on December 16, 2005. It measures , and is high at the tallest point.
Conservation, research, and green practices
The National Aquarium was selected as the National Wildlife Federation's Maryland affiliate in 2011.National Wildlife Federation and National Aquarium Formally Join Forces – National Wildlife Federation The aquarium conducts conservation efforts through events to clean up the Chesapeake Bay Wetlands, and the aquarium's Marine Animal Rescue Program (MARP), which rescues, rehabilitates, and releases marine mammals. MARP has successfully rescued, treated, and returned seals, dolphins, porpoises, pilot whales, pygmy sperm whales, sea turtles, and a manatee to their natural habitats.
The National Aquarium Conservation Center (est. 2009) leads the aquarium's research efforts in resolving critical issues currently impacting coastal ecosystems and watersheds, ocean health, ecological aquaculture, and informs issues of environmental policy and advocacy through conservation research focused on aquatic ecosystems. Some of the center's projects include "The Chesapeake Bay Initiative", tracking mercury levels through the food chain in wild and captive bottlenose dolphins, and assessing chronic natural resource damages from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In 2011, The National Aquarium was honored with the Maryland Green Registry Leadership Award, as an organization that shows "a strong commitment to sustainable practices, measurable results, and continuous improvement" and was recognized by the Baltimore Business Journal and Smart CEO Magazine for exceptional green business practices in 2009.
A 4.3 MW solar farm in Cambridge supplies about 40% of the power for the National Aquarium, and saves about 1,300 metric tons of carbon dioxide during the summer. Energy efficiency upgrades in 2015 saved an additional 3,200 tons of CO2 over the summer.
Exhibits Pier 3 Pavilion This building consists of five levels accessible by both escalator and elevator, with the exception of guests using strollers. Guests with toddlers must carry them. Each floor features several exhibits centred around a main theme. This building also contains two large tanks, one simulating an Atlantic coral reef, and the other representing the open ocean.
Level 1: Blacktip Reef The Central Tray, as it was originally known, has gone through many iterations since the original building opened in 1981. Originally, it was a marine mammal exhibit that had bottlenose dolphins collected from the Gulf of Mexico and eventually, California Sea Lions and beluga whales, but when Pier 4 opened, the animals were moved there. Subsequently, that area became an exhibit called Wings in the Water – which included several species of stingray until 2013, when it became Blacktip Reef. For 30 years, the tray remained the same - a bare concrete bottom, painted a light blue color. The 'pit' was temporarily covered for a time in 2008–9 after that section of the exhibit began to deteriorate. The exhibit was then lined with sand to disguise the 'pit' cover. While aesthetically pleasing, the weight of the sand ended up causing the collapse of the cover itself and was then removed. Originally, the bump out window was obviously not present and the underwater viewing area was quite dark. The viewing windows were the same shape and size as the two windows flanking either side of the bump out window today. Above, the guest pathways were the same, minus the glass siding. On the exit side of Blacktip Reef, an entire guest walkway was cut back considerably to create the sandbar section of the exhibit. Also removed was a cylindrical tank which held numerous exhibits over the years.
Renovations to the tray were needed for years even before Blacktip Reef was even conceived. Originally, it was to be renovated and turned back into the same stingray exhibit, but soon evolved into what the Aquarium has today. This 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 69 species of fish including blacktip reef sharks, emperor angelfish, harlequin tuskfish, humphead wrasse, reticulate whipray, blotched fantail ray, spotted unicornfish, tasselled wobbegong and zebra shark. One of the largest animals in the exhibit was Calypso, a 500-pound green sea turtle that was rescued off the shore of Long Island in 2000. Her left front flipper had become infected and required amputation in order to save her life. Calypso was introduced to the exhibit in 2002 and died on February 3, 2020.
In October 2020, the National Aquarium announced its acquisition of another green sea turtle, Kai, who had suffered injuries in a collision with a boat that left her unable to dive for food. Kai had been rescued in 2018 and treated at the South Carolina Aquarium, from which she was later transferred to the Animal Care and Rescue Center at the National Aquarium for long-term physical rehabilitation.
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. Featured animals include wood turtle, American bullfrog, and rosyside dace in the Allegheny Stream, diamondback terrapin, striped blenny, and sheepshead minnow in the Tidal Marsh, striped burrfish and lookdown in the Coastal Beach, and clearnose skate and summer flounder in the Atlantic Shelf exhibit.
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 and the peacock mantis shrimp uses its strong claws to punch its predators. Featured animals include electric eel, lined seahorse, longnose gar, peacock mantis shrimp and Spotfin butterflyfish.
Living Seashore is a exhibit on the Atlantic seashore featuring two touch pools and a variety of hands-on experiences, giving guests the opportunity to explore the ever-changing Mid-Atlantic shoreline.
Guests can interact with animals which include little skate, Atlantic stingray, Atlantic horseshoe crab, knobbed whelk, giant Pacific octopus, and moon jelly.
Level 4: North Atlantic to the Pacific, Amazon River Forest This level displays several aquatic habitats, including a sea cliffs exhibit, which houses seabirds like Atlantic puffins and black guillemots; a Pacific coral reef exhibit housing Bangaii cardinalfish, percula clownfish and yellow tangs; a kelp forest exhibit with garibaldis, horn shark and several types of starfish; and an Amazon River forest exhibit, in which animals can be seen down in the water and up in the overlying foliage. The exhibit replaced a former touch tank and children’s zone known as Children’s Cove which housed several species of invertebrates from the Pacific Ocean. Animals housed in the Amazon River Forest include reptiles like Arrau turtles, emerald tree boas, smooth-fronted caimans, amphibians such as the giant waxy monkey frog and several types of fish like the blue discus, silver arowana and white-blotched river stingray.
Level 5: Upland Tropical Rain Forest, Hidden Life
Formerly known as The South American Rainforest, this level simulates the Amazon rainforest, and includes two elevated platforms for bird-watching and a cave of various glass-enclosed displays of reptiles and amphibians. Featured animals include: Golden lion tamarin Scarlet ibis Sunbittern Yellow-headed amazon parrot Blue-crowned motmot Turquoise tanager Blue poison dart frog Yellow-footed tortoise Linnaeus's two-toed sloth
Atlantic Coral Reef This large exhibit replicates the Atlantic coral reef, and is filled with more than 100 exotic species that would be found anywhere from closer to shore to out into the trench and open ocean, including a green moray eel, queen triggerfish, black grouper, blacknose shark, southern stingray, Atlantic tarpon, spotfin butterflyfish, spot-fin porcupinefish, and a Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Originally the exhibit had several species of other animals like spotted eagle ray, barracuda, and a hawksbill sea turtle.
Shark Alley: Atlantic Predators