Photo: Ingrid Barrentine/Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
A huge new aquarium is coming to the Pacific Northwest, complete with green sea turtles, hammerhead sharks, and eagle rays. The Pacific Seas Aquarium, a new project of the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, will grace Tacoma with a brand-new home for marine life.
The aquarium will feature a 250,000-gallon “Baja Bay” exhibit that arches over the heads of visitors, housing species like scalloped hammerhead sharks, green sea turtles, and spotted eagle rays.
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The current Marine Discovery Center will soon become the Tidal Touch Zone, a hands-on touch tank for exploratory young visitors. The new aquarium will also feature an exhibit on fish schools, a giant spider crab exhibit, a feature on the Tacoma-Narrows bridge’s marine environment, a tank that showcases deep-dwelling ocean creatures, a coastal kelp forest, an estuary tank, and educational and lab spaces for the future guardians of the ocean.
The $51.6 million dollar project funded by a 2014 Tacoma bond that voters approved, is scheduled to open in summer 2018 and will incorporate the animals that currently reside in the North Pacific Aquarium, a building that will eventually be repurposed by the PDZA. The Pacific Seas Aquarium is the largest capital project in Metro Parks Tacoma's 100-plus year history.
