Zoo Review: North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island

Spread along the North Carolina coastline are the three North Carolina Aquariums, owned and operated by the State.  The three facilities, relatively small compared to the larger urban aquariums, such as Baltimore and Boston, specialize in the freshwater life of the Tarheel State, along with the marine life found off its shore.  The northernmost of these three facilities in the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, located in the popular Outer Banks region.

Upon entering the Aquarium, visitors find themselves in the Seven Rivers gallery, home to a selection of North Carolina's reptiles, amphibians, and freshwater fish.  Prominent among the former are several species of native venomous snakes - copperhead, cottonmouth, and timber and eastern diamondback rattlesnakes - in attractive showcase exhibits.  Also on display here is an exhibit of juvenile American alligators, confiscated from an illegal pet owner.

Larger alligators can be found down the hall in the Wild Wetlands exhibit - including a rarely-displayed leucistic alligator.  I don't normally go for color morphs, but you have to admit that it's an unworldly-looking animal; its bizarre coloration, combined with the fact that, well, it's an alligator and it doesn't move much, resulted in many of the visitors I was standing with that day swearing up and down that it was fake.  The white, blue-eyed gator and its normally-colored counterpart can be viewed above or underwater - if you're extra lucky, you might be able to catch a training demo.  Across from the gators is an exhibit of North American river otters, also viewable above and below water, as well as in their nest cave.  North Carolina Aquarium is involved in rehabbing and releasing orphaned or injured river otters, but the animals here were unable to be released.  Turtles and fish (I'm constantly exasperated by how little signage most aquariums provide for their fish) round out the room.  One of my favorite features was a recreated osprey nest... with a TV mounted on top of it to show life-size footage of ospreys in a nest, raising their chicks.  It was a cool way to incorporate an iconic species that few zoos and aquariums work with, as well as showing an aspect of its life that even fewer will see.

Leaving the marshes behind, the Aquarium turns to the sea.  A gallery of small marine aquariums contain moray eels, spiny lobsters, and other saltwater creatures before emptying into the Sea Senses touch tank area, where visitors can, under supervision, touch cownose rays and white-spotted bamboo sharks.  A psychedelic gallery of jellyfish is next door.

During the US Civil War, a new chapter was added to naval history with the introduction of two ironclad war ships - the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (originally the USS Merrimack), which fought each other to a standstill by the mouth of the Chesapeake.  On the last day of 1862, the Monitor sank off the coast of North Carolina; in 1949, it was rediscovered and designated a National Historic Site.  The largest exhibit at the Aquarium, the 285,000 gallon Graveyard of the Atlantic, is based on commemorating the history of the ship.  Sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks, and nurse sharks glide silently over and around the recreated ruins of the Monitor, resting on the bottom of the tank.  Goliath grouper, barracuda, tarpon, and other fish compliment the scene.   The exhibit is complimented with multimedia educational devices, including video reenactment of the epic battle, to explore the history of the Monitor and its importance to our nation's history.

The final exhibit area is the Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation (STAR) Center, where Aquarium biologists work to rescue loggerheads and other sea turtles that have been cold-stunned, tangled in fishing line, or otherwise incapacitated and nurse them back to health so that they can be released.  This is not an exhibit so much as it is a behind-the-scenes peek at how the turtles are housed and cared for, along with extensive graphics informing the public of how the work is carried out and how they can help sea turtles.  Just out back, the beautiful Southsound Pier juts out over the water, with a pavilion at the end that serves as an idyllic place to sit and rest.

The North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island is quite a small facility, and it took me only an hour to breeze through... and I'm one of those people who reads all the signs.  I did enjoy it very much, however, especially the Monitor exhibit.  I really love it when zoos and aquariums use their exhibits to tell stories about history, culture, and people, and how those all relate to the animals on display - in this case, the story of how a weapon of war now serves as a sanctuary for a variety of marine life, just off the coast of the state.

There were some other stories, however, that I wished the Aquarium had told.  Literally out the back door is Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, an imperiled ecosystem that is home to the last wild red wolves in the world.  I'm not saying that the Aquarium needs an exhibit of wolves, but could it have shared the story, maybe restyling the Wild Wetlands as being themed around the Refuge and drumming up support and interest for tourists to go there?  Or what about climate change?  The Outer Banks is one of the most vulnerable areas in the country to sea level changes - couldn't the Aquarium share those concerns in a visitor-friendly manner, maybe highlighting things visitors could do to help (though I did enjoy the rain garden exhibit outside)?

There has been an explosion in new aquarium development in the United States, with more and more small facilities opening up.  Many of them tend to be somewhat formulaic in their design.  I would love to see more institutions like the North Carolina Aquariums springing up, especially in parts of the country where there currently are no zoos or aquariums.  These facilities could, like this, focus on native wildlife and native stories, combining history, wildlife, plants, and culture to inspire interest in their own backyards.

North Carolina Aquarium of Roanoke Island