National Aquarium

On a drizzily sunday afternono, I ventured out to the National Aquarium. Not the more well known in the DC area (that would be Baltimore), DC's is in the basement of the Treasury building. Pretty non descript entrance when you think about the grandeur of the museums in the area. I mean the building is monumental but that is only because it is the Treasury bulding. Anyway not knowing what to expect, I went through the metal detector and into the basement, paid the $9 admission and got my map. Basically the layout is a single circle of exhibits which claims to take about 45 minutes to see. And after pretty much reading every single placard, that is how long it took. In other words this is a small aquarium. It is roughly divided in two, fresh water on one side and salt on the other, and is arranged according to the habitats of the federal marine parks. In addition there was a special exhibit about Amazon river basin conservation.

Overall, the tanks were a bit boring. There were some sharks but none more than a couple of feet. There big new draw was a giant octopus, currently a baby, but was either hiding or not visible in its tank. Not really any large tanks that give you a sense of a marine environment, just a series of small ones with a handful of species in each. I guess if you have school age children and want to mix it up from going to all the other smithsonian destinations, then this works but definately not if you are only in town for a short time.