Mid-Winter Break: Sea Life Aquarium

On Saturday, [after an early morning trip to the Temple and some more swimming], we checked out of the hotel and headed back to the Mall for an underwater Adventure! On a lower level of the Mall they have the Sea Life Minnesota Aquarium.

Here's some info about what we saw:

When the aquarium reopened in 2011 as SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium, the visitor flow through the aquarium was reversed.
Ray Lagoon is the first exhibit, and features stingrays, a walk-over deck, and special viewing bubbles, after which they proceed to the Rock Pool, a touch pool that was opened in 2009.
Jellyfish Discovery features different kinds of jellyfish including pacific sea nettles, lagoon jellyfish, spotted jellyfish, blue blubber jellyfish, moon jellyfish, and cone jellyfish.
Seahorse Kingdom features six species of seahorse, including pregnant seahorse fathers and baby seahorses, and was added in 2009 along with the touch pool.
The Coral Caves is home to tanks of live coral and fish such as Clownfish and regal blue tang, which are popular with children due to the film Finding Nemo.
After Coral caves, visitors enter The Tunnel

• Rainbow Reef resembles coral reefs, and is home to schooling stingrays, puffer fish, and many others.

• Atlantis is themed to look like an Atlantis Temple, and with a volume of 500,000 US gallons (1,900,000 l) it is the largest tank in the aquarium. Atlantis is home to seven shark species: sand tiger sharks, nurse sharks, brown shark, wobbegong sharks, white tip reef sharks, black tip reef sharks, and zebra sharks. It also contains southern stingrays, giant shovelnosed guitarfish, and green sawfish. Atlantis is also home to several sea turtles – two loggerhead sea turtles, two kemp's riddley sea turtles, and two Giant Green Sea Turtles which were added in March 2011. In addition, it has groupers, red snappers, red drums, pork fish, jacks, permits, and many more species. Visitors can go SCUBA diving in Atlantis and take home all the shark teeth they can find.

• Wild Amazon consists of an arapaima, arowanas, black pacu, midas cichlids, fossil catfish, pictus catfish, leopard catfish, tiger shovel nose catfish, leopard plocostamus, flagtails, silver dollars, and freshwater stingrays. This is meant to simulate the Amazon River, which has more freshwater species of fish than any other body of water in the world.

• Sturgeon Lake is a fresh water exhibit designed to simulate a Minnesotan lake or northern river. That is, with the exception of the alligator gars, which cannot be found naturally in Minnesota. The other species exhibited in this tank include turtles, gar, bass, lake and shovel-nosed sturgeon, common carp, small mouth buffalo, tiger muskie, channel catfish, and paddlefish, among others. This tank you can go SCUBA Diving in and hand feed the sturgeon fish.

And the pictures of what we saw:
The Ray Lagoon:

The Jelly fish Discovery:

Some of the fish we saw in the Seahorse Kingdom, the Coral Caves and the Tunnel:

Inside the Tunnel:

The Turtles:

And the highlight was the Sharks:

It was a really neat experience!