The Georgia Aquarium

One of Atlanta’s premier attractions is the Georgia Aquarium that opened its doors in November 2005. Bernie Marcus, who co-founded the massive retail chain Home Depot along with now NFL Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, donated $200 million of his own, personal fortune to the aquarium as a “thank you” to the city of Atlanta. The facility opened in November 2005 and is one of the largest aquariums in the world, with five exhibit galleries, just over 8 million gallons of water and more than 100,000 fish from 500 species, a 4-D theatre, a food court and of course, the gift shops.

It usually takes about two to four hours to tour the entire aquarium. Along your trek you will get to visit and experience five different exhibits:

In the Cold Water Quest exhibit, presented by Georgia-Pacific, you will see Beluga whales (two males named Nico and Gasper from the La Feria de Chapultepec amusement park in Mexico City, and three females named Marina, Natasha and Maris from the New York Aquarium), California sea lions, sea otters, African black-footed penguins, Australian leafy sea dragons, giant Pacific octopus, garibaldi damselfish and Japanese spider crabs.

The Georgia Explorer – Discover Our Coast exhibit is presented by SunTrust Bank, and is an interactive gallery with petting tanks full of horseshoe crabs, sea stars, stingrays and shrimp. There are also Georgia sea turtles and the fishes of Gray’s Reef (an area of the Georgia coast designated a National Marine Sanctuary) and Right Whales (which live off the Georgia coast and are one of the most endangered mammals on the planet). There’s also featured video about these whales and a large model of a whale that kids can actually crawl inside.