National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium
Visit: 02 May 2025
Photo gallery: National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium - ZooChat
The National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium is near Hengchun in the south of Taiwan. The number 101 bus from Hengchun stops directly outside. The entry fee is quite expensive, at 450 TWD (about US$15, 13 Euros, or £11).
This is an irritatingly-confusing Aquarium to find your way around in, and to even find the animals in. From the ticket counters you walk to your right to the entry doors and over to the ticket gates, but then on the other side you find you're outside again and have to walk across a long courtyard to reach the actual entrance, passing food stalls (including a Starbucks) and two different pools which from the map you might imagine are for animals but are just for kids.
Once finally inside the Aquarium you consult your map and see that there are two wings (Waters of Taiwan and Coral Kingdom), and then a third separate building (Waters of the World) - which again you reach by passing multiple food outlets. There are gift shops everywhere as well. I think there literally are more merchandise areas than animal areas.
The map was doubly-confusing when standing looking at the interior of the foyer in person. There were sets of stairs either side, so it seemed like the two wings were upstairs. I headed up one side and found a restaurant which did in fact have an aquarium tank in it, went back along the passage and found a gift shop and sets of elevators and toilets, went round the walkway to the other side and found more toilets and elevators, another gift shop, and what I thought must finally be a display area, which it was, but only for walls of text about coral reefs.
Back down on the ground floor I saw that the two wings were on that level, but the Coral Kingdom wing was behind one set of stairs, and the Waters of Taiwan was behind a big mock-rock waterfall, so neither were obvious (to me, at least).
Something I quickly realised is that even though this is has "museum" in the forefront of its name, the education attempts here are really shallow (on the whole, not entirely). Most tanks have zero identification signs on them, or it is at the most basic of levels - numerous tanks simply had big signs saying "Sea Cucumbers" or "Lobster". For most of the way around the facility, you've either got no information, or you have walls of information - literally you're walking through rooms with no tanks and the walls will be covered in masses of text that nobody will read, and almost all of it is really superficial - although it is at least in both Chinese and English.
I went round the Coral Kingdom wing first. There are some nice healthy-looking soft corals in the opening tanks here, and there is some signage on each of them, but the next part is a series of tunnel-tanks and corridors based around a sunken ship theme and here nothing is identified. Signs above tanks would just read something along the lines of "Captain Quarters - now fish live in it".
Their pamphlet says the tunnel is 84 metres long, but it winds around in and out of the tank (or tanks?) so it doesn't have much of an effect.
This section leads to another tunnel-tank, but this time for a Beluga Whale which was floating listlessly near the surface. After the tunnel was the "Marine Mammals Gallery" which was more of the "text-on-walls" type display.
Apparently they have or had dolphins and an outdoors show arena but either this was all off-show on my visit or they no longer have them. There was a sign on the Beluga tank saying something like "No performance for the Beluga".
From here I crossed over to the second wing, the Waters of Taiwan which follows a water-cycle theme from a mountain stream to the ocean, culminating in their "Open Ocean" tank which has a 4x16 metre viewing window and holds one million gallons of water. This tank used to have a Whale Shark in it, but fortunately doesn't any more (although really I had decided to visit this Aquarium because I'd seen a mention of them having a Whale Shark - having been there I'm glad they don't).
Entering Waters of Taiwan, the first impression is of good-looking freshwater tanks with a lot of identification signage. However the signage - triangular panels which you can turn to see each side) - aren't just identifying fish in the tanks, but all sorts of different species from that habitat. The Open Ocean tank, for example, has no fewer than seventeen shark species on its signs, but there was just one shark in the tank (a Hammerhead, I think a Scalloped). Amongst the signed species were Great White Shark and multiple Thresher Sharks.
I was getting more and more frustrated with this Aquarium as I went around. Many tanks had no signage, others had bald one-word signs (e.g. "Syngnathidae"), and then some had signage for all sorts of species that weren't even in the tanks.
The third part of the Aquarium is the Waters of the World building, which was where I just didn't care any more because it is themed around not having live animals. One of the videos playing boasted of it being a "no water" Aquarium. The major parts of this building are long winding corridors of mock-rock (or mock-ice in the polar bits) with 3D videos of aquatica playing on wall-sized screens, starting off with "Ancient Ocean". I skimmed through all of this very quickly to the parts with live "living fossils" (including Zebra Bullhead Sharks, Freshwater Stingrays, Longnose Gars, Asian Arowana, etc), but even here there was a tank holding fake Nautilus hanging on strings and a tank with a fake Coelacanth lurking at the back.
There is a Harbour Seal in a tank which is actually much better than any seal tank in a Japanese Aquarium, a penguin exhibit with four species (Adelie, Gentoo, Chinstrap, and Macaroni), and another with Tufted Puffins.
Probably the best exhibit overall is in this building as well, the "Kelp Forest". The seven strands of kelp may be fake, but the tank looks amazing, with a viewing window of 10x10 metres and a water volume of 180,000 gallons. The fact that it can be viewed from two levels aids in the appeal immensely.
Visit: 02 May 2025
Photo gallery: National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium - ZooChat
The National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium is near Hengchun in the south of Taiwan. The number 101 bus from Hengchun stops directly outside. The entry fee is quite expensive, at 450 TWD (about US$15, 13 Euros, or £11).
This is an irritatingly-confusing Aquarium to find your way around in, and to even find the animals in. From the ticket counters you walk to your right to the entry doors and over to the ticket gates, but then on the other side you find you're outside again and have to walk across a long courtyard to reach the actual entrance, passing food stalls (including a Starbucks) and two different pools which from the map you might imagine are for animals but are just for kids.
Once finally inside the Aquarium you consult your map and see that there are two wings (Waters of Taiwan and Coral Kingdom), and then a third separate building (Waters of the World) - which again you reach by passing multiple food outlets. There are gift shops everywhere as well. I think there literally are more merchandise areas than animal areas.
The map was doubly-confusing when standing looking at the interior of the foyer in person. There were sets of stairs either side, so it seemed like the two wings were upstairs. I headed up one side and found a restaurant which did in fact have an aquarium tank in it, went back along the passage and found a gift shop and sets of elevators and toilets, went round the walkway to the other side and found more toilets and elevators, another gift shop, and what I thought must finally be a display area, which it was, but only for walls of text about coral reefs.
Back down on the ground floor I saw that the two wings were on that level, but the Coral Kingdom wing was behind one set of stairs, and the Waters of Taiwan was behind a big mock-rock waterfall, so neither were obvious (to me, at least).
Something I quickly realised is that even though this is has "museum" in the forefront of its name, the education attempts here are really shallow (on the whole, not entirely). Most tanks have zero identification signs on them, or it is at the most basic of levels - numerous tanks simply had big signs saying "Sea Cucumbers" or "Lobster". For most of the way around the facility, you've either got no information, or you have walls of information - literally you're walking through rooms with no tanks and the walls will be covered in masses of text that nobody will read, and almost all of it is really superficial - although it is at least in both Chinese and English.
I went round the Coral Kingdom wing first. There are some nice healthy-looking soft corals in the opening tanks here, and there is some signage on each of them, but the next part is a series of tunnel-tanks and corridors based around a sunken ship theme and here nothing is identified. Signs above tanks would just read something along the lines of "Captain Quarters - now fish live in it".
Their pamphlet says the tunnel is 84 metres long, but it winds around in and out of the tank (or tanks?) so it doesn't have much of an effect.
This section leads to another tunnel-tank, but this time for a Beluga Whale which was floating listlessly near the surface. After the tunnel was the "Marine Mammals Gallery" which was more of the "text-on-walls" type display.
Apparently they have or had dolphins and an outdoors show arena but either this was all off-show on my visit or they no longer have them. There was a sign on the Beluga tank saying something like "No performance for the Beluga".
From here I crossed over to the second wing, the Waters of Taiwan which follows a water-cycle theme from a mountain stream to the ocean, culminating in their "Open Ocean" tank which has a 4x16 metre viewing window and holds one million gallons of water. This tank used to have a Whale Shark in it, but fortunately doesn't any more (although really I had decided to visit this Aquarium because I'd seen a mention of them having a Whale Shark - having been there I'm glad they don't).
Entering Waters of Taiwan, the first impression is of good-looking freshwater tanks with a lot of identification signage. However the signage - triangular panels which you can turn to see each side) - aren't just identifying fish in the tanks, but all sorts of different species from that habitat. The Open Ocean tank, for example, has no fewer than seventeen shark species on its signs, but there was just one shark in the tank (a Hammerhead, I think a Scalloped). Amongst the signed species were Great White Shark and multiple Thresher Sharks.
I was getting more and more frustrated with this Aquarium as I went around. Many tanks had no signage, others had bald one-word signs (e.g. "Syngnathidae"), and then some had signage for all sorts of species that weren't even in the tanks.
The third part of the Aquarium is the Waters of the World building, which was where I just didn't care any more because it is themed around not having live animals. One of the videos playing boasted of it being a "no water" Aquarium. The major parts of this building are long winding corridors of mock-rock (or mock-ice in the polar bits) with 3D videos of aquatica playing on wall-sized screens, starting off with "Ancient Ocean". I skimmed through all of this very quickly to the parts with live "living fossils" (including Zebra Bullhead Sharks, Freshwater Stingrays, Longnose Gars, Asian Arowana, etc), but even here there was a tank holding fake Nautilus hanging on strings and a tank with a fake Coelacanth lurking at the back.
There is a Harbour Seal in a tank which is actually much better than any seal tank in a Japanese Aquarium, a penguin exhibit with four species (Adelie, Gentoo, Chinstrap, and Macaroni), and another with Tufted Puffins.
Probably the best exhibit overall is in this building as well, the "Kelp Forest". The seven strands of kelp may be fake, but the tank looks amazing, with a viewing window of 10x10 metres and a water volume of 180,000 gallons. The fact that it can be viewed from two levels aids in the appeal immensely.