Website:
http://www.seattleaquarium.org
The primary links on the website are under the headings Plan a Visit, Membership & Donate, Animals & Activities, Events & Programs, and Conservation. This is a pretty comprehensive list and I like how it includes conservation. The animal fact sheets however, are far from comprehensive. They only have fact sheets of individual species for their mammals, birds, the giant pacific octopus, and a very small selection of fish. If, for instance, I were to take a photo of a fish and later want to look up what it was I would only be able to find out a very general idea of what kind of fish it is, like a rockfish, or sculpin. Not at all helpful to those who like specifics.
A downloadable and viewable pdf of the aquarium map is available on the website, but the map portion is sideways (it is a direct pdf of what they hand you when you enter), so it can be difficult to read.
Prices and hours:
Open from 9:30am - 5:00pm daily, with a few exceptions on some holidays and special events. See website for specifics.
Admissions:
Adult (13+ years) $22.95
Youth (4-12) $15.95
Child (0-3) Free
Discounts:
Seniors (65+) $2 off
People with disabilities $2 off
Military (have ID) $2.95 off
Aquarium:
The closest bus stops are by the Pike place Market, a good walk away with a lot of stairs (downhill to the Aquarium, uphill back). Not easily accessible for people in wheelchairs or with difficulty walking long distances and/or stairs. There is some parking across the street from the Aquarium, but no free parking on most days.
There is a small cafeteria on the upper floor of the building, which can be accessed by stairs. There is an elevator for people with wheelchairs. The cafe is marked on the map, but can still be confusing to find. You can bring your own food into the cafe area, but there are signs discouraging it even though there are no other picnic type areas to sit and eat. The bathrooms are marked clearly on the map and are easy to spot while walking around.
There are a couple of special areas for younger children to be entertained by activities and to participate in interactive learning. One is basically self-serve, and the other also has periodic staff members running different activities.
An exhibit that counts as an all-ages interactive activity is the two large touch pools where people can look at and gently touch a variety of animals, including anemones, sea cucumbers, sea stars, and urchins. The pools are always staffed and monitored to keep both the humans and the animals safe. The staff can also answer any questions you may have about the exhibit and the animals.
One of the touch tanks.
Exhibits:
For the most part the exhibits did a great job in showing the variety of aquatic species and how they live together in their environment. Every fish exhibit had more than one species displayed in an area that replicated how their natural habitat looks.
The signage, however, was terrible. From my experience so far this seems to plague most aquarium exhibits. While they had a lot of screens with slideshow signs that slowly paged through a list of species, they were almost never a complete list of what was in the exhibit represented. Especially in the Pacific Coral Reef area. I would think they would use the screens to make it easier to add and subtract species from the signs as the exhibits get switched out and new fish are added. But they seem to be rarely updated. The signs for the birds and mammals were much better and showed all the animals in each exhibit. The best signed exhibit by far is the pacific giant octopus exhibit, but the signs are on the wall so most people have their backs to them while viewing the octopus, making them harder to see.
There were also a lot of signs about conservation projects and what everyday people can do to help protect the marine environment. The signs were in plain view and one area even had little interactive screens for children to learn from.
The aquarium may not have had any large sharks on exhibit, but they still had an area with information on the local species of sharks and what research is being done on them. Sometimes there would be a staff member there to answer questions.
The six gill shark education about research station.
At almost every exhibit area there was at least one docent/staff member to answer any questions you might have. They were very knowledgable about the animals and exhibits, sometimes having small props or specimen jars to show to people.
The one keeper talk/show I was able to see was focused almost exclusively on education about the exhibit and the area in the wild it represented. The show was engaging to both children and adults and featured a scuba diver in the tank with a special mask allowing her to talk to the audience directly.
A diver and her assistant educate the crowd and answer questions.
It can be hard to try and note any stereotyping behavior in fish, as some species have to constantly move in order to breathe and in a small enclosed space that inevitably leads to swimming around in the clear areas. I can say that some fish looked like they were circling in much more of a patterned way than others, but I admit that I had a limited time at the aquarium so I was unable to watch for a while and take note of species doing that. From what I remember it was mostly the larger species of fish showing the patterned behavior, but not always.
The animals that definitely had stereotyping like behavior were the mammals. One out of the two harbor seals was swimming laps in a particular way, and so was one of the two fur seals. It can be hard to tell with sea otters, because they naturally spend most of their time grooming themselves, but it seemed like some of the grooming was in a pattern where they would groom a particular spot over and over again in the same way.
All zoo and aquarium photographers know that marine exhibits pose a special challenge as almost all the exhibits are underwater through glass. The only exhibits where there is any viewing through open air are the touch pools, the oystercatcher, and the other shorebird exhibit with the long-billed curlew, black-bellied plover, and killdeer. The good news is the Pacific Coral Reef area is dark with brightly lit tanks, so has minimal to no glare on the glass. Everywhere else has lots of glare and the Puget Sound Fish area has low lighting in the tanks as well as the room, which makes photography in there more difficult. Some exhibits, like the giant pacific octopus and the side viewing area of Window on Washington Waters have curved glass (plexiglass) surfaces, which can be hard to photograph through.
Overall, this aquarium has really great docent presence, allowing visitors to get answers that are not on the signs. Unfortunately that is super important because a lot of the signs are not very helpful and a lot of species are not identified by them. The keeper talks are informative and educational more than just entertainment, but are still entertaining enough to pull crowds to watch. The food situation is not great, with a limited cafe and eating area. The small space the aquarium has really limits the sizes of the marine mammal exhibits, and several of those mammals display stereotyping behaviors, mostly pacing in regular routs underwater.
Last but not least: you do in fact have to exit through the gift shop. It's not an easy exit either as you are forced to weave between racks of merchandise to get to the exit doors.
Rub your head and your tummy at the same time!
