Mote Marine Aquarium opened their new Mote Science Education Aquarium (Mote SEA) yesterday, October 8th. There was a member preview, but I was not able to attend those dates and went the morning that it opened. The brand new facility looks fantastic, I really love the design of the building and how it is all laid out.
Currently tickets are $37 for adults and $29 for ages 3-12; kids under age 3 are free. I think that this is a fair ticket price overall, but considering that it is pretty much the same price as the Florida Aquarium ($36.95/$31) a little over an hour away it is a little higher than I would like. Between the two the Florida Aquarium offers a lot more value for the ticket, although the FL Aquarium charges for parking (well, the city does as it is a city lot) and Mote does not.
Upon passing through security and ticket check you enter on the first floor. I was directed to take the escalator to the third floor and start the tour there, working my way down to ground level. I did do that, but I ended up going back up and down a few times to see the whole place a couple of times. Touring the aquarium would take around an hour if you did not go back to visit a second time; I was there about 1hr 45 minutes.
The third floor is primarily the space to see manatees, river otters, alligator snapping turtles, gopher tortoises, and a few lab areas. The aquarium has large windows into various labs, veterinary space, husbandry, coral breeding, and other staff areas throughout the three levels.
The Florida Waters is mostly outside, large shade sails cover the exhibits. If I am being honest I found the river otter habitat a bit disappointing, it is almost all mock rock. There is a small area of dirt substrate and one plant. However, the pool is nicely deep and well done. Next door is the manatee pool, which is fairly decent if standard. It does have a nice variation on depth with a shallow part on one side attached to a medical tank with a large viewing window.
Across from the manatees are large exhibits for an alligator snapping turtle and gopher tortoise.
Manatee:
Otters:
Main Indo-Pacific Reef:
Level 2:
Back inside leads you down a set of stairs to level two. The second level is the main exhibit level with the Indo-Pacific area, Florida Gulf Tank overlook, and a large exhibit for Humboldt penguins. The Indo-Pacific has a really nice main tank housing lots of fish including blacktip reef, whitetip reef, zebra sharks as well as a bottlenose wedgefish (signed not seen).
Passing the tank takes you to a section of touch tanks for cold water inverts and Shark Encounters that houses epaulette, coral catshark, and brown banded bamboo sharks. There are also a selection of fairly standard tanks for octopus, giant crabs (sheep crabs), kelp forest, and lastly the large habitat for penguins. The penguin habitat uses the space great with a large land area that include nesting niches and various substrates.
The last major exhibit on level 2 is the Florida’s Gulf Tank overlook. This area overlooks the large tank for Gulf fish. The interesting aspect of the overlook is that it looks over the area viewable on level 1 as well as a large shallower area only viewable from the overlook that has fake corals and such. I have not seen an aquarium do this before, so it is fairly unique as far as I am aware. This room also has a medium “Florida Coral Reefs” tank.
Level1:
The last exhibits are back on the ground floor. Florida's Gulf Coast is a really well done area with standard tanks for more octopus (common and Caribbean), touch tanks for rays (cownose, Atlantic stingray, and Atlantic guitarfish), horseshoe crabs, and more inverts. Across for the touch tanks there are tanks for lionfish and giant isopods. Lastly, the largest tank in the aquarium is the impressive Florida’s Gulf tank. The stars here are the sharks: sandbar, black nose, nurse (a really big example of one), and sand tiger (signed, not seen). There is also a signed sawshark or sawfish, but the digital sign just showed a tiny image of part of the rostrum, so I don’t know what species and it was not in the tank. There are two viewing windows for the Gulf Tank (in addition to the overlook). The first is a curved window and the other is a massive window that you have to walk around to, you have to make a left towards the “Gulf room” (special events space) and then you can view this large window.
In conclusion, this is a really nice aquarium, nothing is particularly ground breaking, but the exhibits are all really well done and the space is used well. Being able to see into staff and research space is pretty cool. Nothing is done poorly, but nothing is done incredibly unique other than the gulf overlook area.
They have a fair collection of sharks and rays, especially given the size of the place, but that makes sense given their history: Epaulette, brown banded bamboo, coral catshark, blacktip reef, white tipped reef, zebra, sandbar, black nose, sand tiger, nurse, a sawfish or sawshark, southern stingray, bluespotted ribbontailed ray, cownose ray, Atlantic stingray, bottlenose wedgefish, and Atlantic guitarfish.
All that said, this is a fantastic medium sized aquarium that should be on the radar of anyone visiting the area; it makes a great addition to the Tampa metro area if you were to plan a visit to the area for zoos. The new location off of Interstate 75 makes it far more accessible than the old Mote location on the beach.
I joined as a member, so I know that I will be back. I fully support Mote’s efforts in research and education and expect to take my family with me next time I visit.
Currently tickets are $37 for adults and $29 for ages 3-12; kids under age 3 are free. I think that this is a fair ticket price overall, but considering that it is pretty much the same price as the Florida Aquarium ($36.95/$31) a little over an hour away it is a little higher than I would like. Between the two the Florida Aquarium offers a lot more value for the ticket, although the FL Aquarium charges for parking (well, the city does as it is a city lot) and Mote does not.
Upon passing through security and ticket check you enter on the first floor. I was directed to take the escalator to the third floor and start the tour there, working my way down to ground level. I did do that, but I ended up going back up and down a few times to see the whole place a couple of times. Touring the aquarium would take around an hour if you did not go back to visit a second time; I was there about 1hr 45 minutes.
The third floor is primarily the space to see manatees, river otters, alligator snapping turtles, gopher tortoises, and a few lab areas. The aquarium has large windows into various labs, veterinary space, husbandry, coral breeding, and other staff areas throughout the three levels.
The Florida Waters is mostly outside, large shade sails cover the exhibits. If I am being honest I found the river otter habitat a bit disappointing, it is almost all mock rock. There is a small area of dirt substrate and one plant. However, the pool is nicely deep and well done. Next door is the manatee pool, which is fairly decent if standard. It does have a nice variation on depth with a shallow part on one side attached to a medical tank with a large viewing window.
Across from the manatees are large exhibits for an alligator snapping turtle and gopher tortoise.
Manatee:
Otters:
Main Indo-Pacific Reef:
Level 2:
Back inside leads you down a set of stairs to level two. The second level is the main exhibit level with the Indo-Pacific area, Florida Gulf Tank overlook, and a large exhibit for Humboldt penguins. The Indo-Pacific has a really nice main tank housing lots of fish including blacktip reef, whitetip reef, zebra sharks as well as a bottlenose wedgefish (signed not seen).
Passing the tank takes you to a section of touch tanks for cold water inverts and Shark Encounters that houses epaulette, coral catshark, and brown banded bamboo sharks. There are also a selection of fairly standard tanks for octopus, giant crabs (sheep crabs), kelp forest, and lastly the large habitat for penguins. The penguin habitat uses the space great with a large land area that include nesting niches and various substrates.
The last major exhibit on level 2 is the Florida’s Gulf Tank overlook. This area overlooks the large tank for Gulf fish. The interesting aspect of the overlook is that it looks over the area viewable on level 1 as well as a large shallower area only viewable from the overlook that has fake corals and such. I have not seen an aquarium do this before, so it is fairly unique as far as I am aware. This room also has a medium “Florida Coral Reefs” tank.
Level1:
The last exhibits are back on the ground floor. Florida's Gulf Coast is a really well done area with standard tanks for more octopus (common and Caribbean), touch tanks for rays (cownose, Atlantic stingray, and Atlantic guitarfish), horseshoe crabs, and more inverts. Across for the touch tanks there are tanks for lionfish and giant isopods. Lastly, the largest tank in the aquarium is the impressive Florida’s Gulf tank. The stars here are the sharks: sandbar, black nose, nurse (a really big example of one), and sand tiger (signed, not seen). There is also a signed sawshark or sawfish, but the digital sign just showed a tiny image of part of the rostrum, so I don’t know what species and it was not in the tank. There are two viewing windows for the Gulf Tank (in addition to the overlook). The first is a curved window and the other is a massive window that you have to walk around to, you have to make a left towards the “Gulf room” (special events space) and then you can view this large window.
In conclusion, this is a really nice aquarium, nothing is particularly ground breaking, but the exhibits are all really well done and the space is used well. Being able to see into staff and research space is pretty cool. Nothing is done poorly, but nothing is done incredibly unique other than the gulf overlook area.
They have a fair collection of sharks and rays, especially given the size of the place, but that makes sense given their history: Epaulette, brown banded bamboo, coral catshark, blacktip reef, white tipped reef, zebra, sandbar, black nose, sand tiger, nurse, a sawfish or sawshark, southern stingray, bluespotted ribbontailed ray, cownose ray, Atlantic stingray, bottlenose wedgefish, and Atlantic guitarfish.
All that said, this is a fantastic medium sized aquarium that should be on the radar of anyone visiting the area; it makes a great addition to the Tampa metro area if you were to plan a visit to the area for zoos. The new location off of Interstate 75 makes it far more accessible than the old Mote location on the beach.
I joined as a member, so I know that I will be back. I fully support Mote’s efforts in research and education and expect to take my family with me next time I visit.
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lmao. We’re gonna have to ask them where they got it from and watch it grow up to really know which of the five possible ones it is, but I’d lean one of Australian/fine-spotted/reticulate for now (it’s almost certainly not a honeycomb or a true leopard based on the appearance of it as a juvenile, those have more particular patterns).
