Pacific Seas Aquarium - 35,000 sq. ft. and opens this summer

What will be featured in this "Pacific Seas Aquarium"?

@pachyderm pro If you click on the link below and scroll down to near the bottom then you'll see a clear, detailed map of the upcoming Pacific Seas Aquarium at Point Defiance Zoo. 'Baja Bay' and its 250,000 gallons is the centrepiece exhibit:

Pacific Seas Aquarium > Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium

@snowleopard do you think this will become the #1 Zoo-aquarium in North America? I’ve heard that Indianapolis has a good one, and I adored Pittsburgh’s complex, but this one looks very promising.

@TZDugong Nothing tops Omaha. Here is something that I wrote on another thread a while ago:

I think that one could make a case for these dozen American zoos as having "proper" aquariums:

Baton Rouge Zoo (river otters and 30 small fish tanks in "L'aquarium de Louisiane")
Brookfield Zoo (if one were to count the Living Coast and Seven Seas buildings)
Houston Zoo
Indianapolis Zoo (Oceans complex)
John Ball Zoo
Oklahoma City Zoo (Aquatics building)
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
Pittsburgh Zoo
Point Defiance Zoo
San Antonio Zoo
Toledo Zoo (30,000 sq. ft. aquarium)
Wildlife World Zoo

I've visited all of those dozen zoos and I've toured the aquatic facilities and in my opinion Omaha and Pittsburgh clearly have the two best aquariums that are found within American zoos. Indianapolis has a very good building that focuses on mammals, while Toledo spent $25 million renovating their historic, 1930s-era aquarium in recent years and so I'm due for a revisit there. Point Defiance Zoo is opening its Pacific Seas Aquarium next year, a 35,000 sq. ft. building that will be larger than just about any Sea Life and could (in theory) stand alone as a separate attraction due to its size. Of course it will surely not compete with Omaha as whenever Omaha builds anything then it is usually the best of its kind. The aquarium there is at least 70,000 sq. ft. in size!

Is this replacing both the North Pacific and South Pacific aquariums, or just the big North Pacific aquarium that was from the 1960s?

@DavidBrown Just the big North Pacific Aquarium that dates from 1963. The South Pacific Aquarium with its big shark tank, and with a fairly new Stingray Cove touch tank with small sharks and stingrays, will remain open. Not many zoos worldwide will have two completely separate aquariums!