With my stepdaughter down from Jackson for a weekend, we decided to take the family for our first visit at the recently opened Mississippi Aquarium in Gulfport. While it’s certainly small, if you love aquariums, this is a nice one. It costs $30 for adults and $25 for children, and at a leisurely pace you can see it all in an hour.
Beautifully landscaped, the comfortably wide walking paths slope and undulate like the sea. On arriving, one is treated to a crocodilian exhibit, a half dozen alligators doing what these reptiles do best. Sleep. The enclosure had a clean, natural feel to it. Feeding the creatures isn’t allowed.
From there a left turn takes you past the snack bar and into the aviary. Why does the aquarium have an aviary? Who knows? Anyway, it features colorful exotic birds in a very intimate netted tent. A flock of green parakeet-looking birds chirped incessantly, and large white puffy things that Claudia designated as “clouds” perched on tree branches. The area is so small it’s easy to spot colorful fowls hiding under bushes or scratching the dirt for seeds.
The four male dolphins put on a great show, with both above and underwater viewing available. There’s a feeding time / training period where the dolphins do some tricks at 2:30, and then at 4 p.m. the full dolphin demonstration. One of the staff explained she identifies the dolphins based on marks on their tail fins.
Down the path we came to the large outdoor pool featuring a variety of fish, such as alligator gar, paddlefish, largemouth bass, and channel catfish. The gar like to float up to the window and hover there, staring at you with their weird unblinking white eyes. Each gar has distinctive coloring, their scales spiraling down their backs.
The large inside building has two huge tanks, a four-story circular tube and a huge million-gallon tank with a window wall that makes great viewing. On the top level there’s a large touching pool with crabs, stingrays, anemone, shrimp, and the occasional starfish.
We rested at one of the tables in front of the snack bar munching on popsicles and pretzels and enjoying the view of the Gulfport Port. Throughout, the staff are knowledgeable and friendly, giving frequent demonstrations and talks. We stopped at one where a young woman held a red-footed tortoise, allowing children to rub its shell as she explained its role in propagating fauna. Lecture are scheduled throughout the day at the various exhibits.
As always in these types of attractions, you exit through the gift shop. I’m not much of one for buying these types of souvenirs, plush dolls, toys, and T-shirts, but being an author, I do like looking at the books. The store had a large selection of National Geographic, animal identification, and especially environmental books. Yeah, save the environment everyone!
Okay, that’s all. No individual fish tanks like in a larger aquarium, such as New Orleans or Toronto or Boston. Still, Gulfport’s Mississippi Aquarium provides a lovely opportunity to spend an hour or so, and that’s probably enough in Mississippi’s heat.