Mac Rating: 0.00 | Votes: | Date: 03/06/2026 15:32:00

On the central downtown waterfront of Boston at the foot of State Street and immediately north of Long Wharf, the New England Aquarium is the most heavily visited tourist attraction in Boston and one of the largest public aquariums in the United States. The aquarium opened in June 1969 in a dramatic four-storey concrete-and-glass building designed by the celebrated architectural firm of Cambridge Seven Associates, occupying the Central Wharf site that had served as a major Boston commercial shipping pier from the early nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century decline of the central downtown waterfront. The aquarium's defining single feature is the celebrated Giant Ocean Tank, a 200,000-gallon, four-storey-tall central cylindrical saltwater tank that occupies the central interior of the main building. Visitors ascend a spiralling ramp that wraps around the outside of the tank, providing continuous viewing windows at all depths as they climb. The tank houses several hundred individual fish representing dozens of species from the celebrated Caribbean reef ecosystems, including loggerhead and green sea turtles, several species of small reef shark, large groupers, moray eels, schools of small reef fish and the celebrated colony of Atlantic stingrays. The tank's celebrated lone female green sea turtle Myrtle has been a resident since 1970 and is the oldest individual animal in the aquarium's collection. The surrounding building houses some 70 individual exhibits and tanks covering the full range of marine and freshwater habitats. The standout exhibits include the celebrated Northern Waters of the World gallery (covering the cold-water ecosystems of the Gulf of Maine and the broader North Atlantic), the celebrated Indo-Pacific Coral Reef tank, the celebrated Penguin Colony (with three species of penguin in the lower-level pool), the celebrated Jellies gallery and the celebrated Edge of the Sea touch tank. The adjacent Simons IMAX Theatre, a five-storey-tall domed IMAX theatre, shows daily large-format science and nature documentaries. The aquarium also operates a substantial whale-watching programme aboard the celebrated New England Aquarium catamarans, which depart daily from the adjacent Central Wharf for three-and-a-half-hour excursions out to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary to observe humpback whales, fin whales, minke whales and the celebrated North Atlantic right whales. The aquarium is open every day with extended summer hours.