a panorama image of gasworks park, looking south over south lake union. the day is sunny, the lake is calm, and the path lays at your feet

Musings and Mumblings

The New Ocean Pavillion is Gorgeous!!

by: Rey, Mon, Aug 11, 2025

Blaugust, Seattle, aquarium, family

I've now gotten a good nights sleep and recovered from dehydration and overstimulation, so I can tell you all, that Seattle's new addition to the Aquarium is beautiful, and amazing. I could've stayed in there all day just watching the giant reef tank!

All the following pictures are different views into the same tank, which was just... extra special, I think. So much was going on in different levels in the water column and terrain, and they made it really easy to examine multiple of them in a really smooth way.

A view upwards, where the building overhangs the entranceway of the pavilion, and the tank is visible from beneath, via a large round window, maybe ten feet across.
This is both awesome and a terrible idea -- I wanted to just stand there and look up for awhile, but it was RIGHT at the doors, and people were coming and going, and being that rude gives me hives!
A crowd of people stand in a loose crowd, looking at a huge aquarium, with a slope of coral and rocks rising away from them, full of colorful smaller salt-water reef fish.
The biggest view, from the ground floor, gives space for question and answer time with aquarium employees, and showcases the smaller fish.
A large (8 or 9 foot across) ray swam up to the glass, stalled out at the top, and kind of hovered there for a bit, showing us his white belly and cute face his mouth, nose and gills make, like a little smile
This is the same window, but I was closer. This ray was huge, the scale doesn't seem to translate well, and it was definitely showing off. It cruised right up to the glass, pulled up, and stalled out there like some kind of trick fighter pilot!
A smaller ray is silhouetted from below, white belly, distinct diamond shape, and long thin tail trailing behind. he's surrounded by a dozen or so smaller silver fish.
This guy tried, but it's hard to follow the act his bigger cousin started with.
a very large, very flat fish is swimming across the frame. only his front half is visible, he is very strangely flat and wide, almost like a flounder but MUCH bigger. The top of his head is bumpy and he has a ridge of spikes down his spine. with two smaller ridges parallel along his... shoulder? His cheeks have fins that are large like a rays' in front of his pectoral fins, and he's got lighter spots over the large dorsal fin. He was maybe... 12 feet long?
I have NO idea what this fish is. I have dubbed him "flat guy" in my image names. One of the (only) things I didn't like was that instead of static placards, they had interactive computers to look up what fish you saw... but that moved the information away from where I could see it, and therefore made it difficult to access. Bring Back The Plaques, Seattle Aquarium!!
A full view of the same guy from the previous picture, swimming over the top of the window from the entranceway, but still viewed from the side, via an upper window.
These two pictures and the next one were taken from the upper floor, which looks into the top of the reef tank, making the bigger animals easier to see, as they cruised at the top looking down on everything.
A side profile of a small black-tipped reef shark, swimming along the windows, with lots of coral in the background, and the tank sloping back down towards the first floor viewing window.
Again, scale is hard. This shark was maybe half the size of Flat Guy, above!

The smaller tanks were also gorgeous, even though the blue lighting was a bit rough on my eyes. (It turns out blue light can be distorted when your vision is relatively bad. I can't read blue segmented LEDs to save my life, for instance!)

A very large lobster peeks out from a crevace between two rocks. his antennae reach across the entire depth of the tank, and are reddish, while his shell is blue and his legs are black and white stripes, like something out of beatlejuice.
The scale of this lobster is hard to express. I stared for a bit before I figured out what he was - I thought his antennae was a creature's tentacle! He was sharing his space with two lionfish, one of which is photobombing the bottom of the picture here.
a group of small mangrove trees, with reddish trunks and light green oval leaves, grow in the back of a tank. The roots are not yet in the water, really, but it looks like they will be able to grow into it as the display ages. The tank itself is white sand with rocky edges, round, and protrudes both into the second floor and over the edge of the floor below.
The Mangrove section was small, for something that was called out on the map - I can only imagine that they're expecting those trees to grow in and create something special. Time will tell!
a view of the three pools on the second floor of the pavilion, from the top of the staircase. all three round tanks are visible from where they overhang the first floor, and schools of fish are visible in all three. Above the center tank, a large spire of rock with ferns planted at the top and along the side adds greenery to their beach-environment theme.
I really loved the above-the-water greenery they had, here, it gives everything a very... in-situ kind of feel, especially with the way the whole building feels weathered by waves.
A view of the upstairs of the pavilion from the ground floor. The balcony above is lined with three rounded plexiglass tanks each open to view from the floor below, like huge bowls resting on the edge. The mangrove tank from the last picture is the right hand one, here, and fish are visible in all three.
The architects obviously had fun, here. all organic curves and overhangs.
a pebble-covered floor of a tank, with some sea grass growing in small clumps. in the center, 3 brown sticks or stems rise up, and clinging to each of them by their tails are brown and black mottled sea-horses.
The colors of these guys were surprisingly muted. They blend in quite well!
A
Pipefish are really cool, recently I've seen a lot of lamentation from the aquarium people on youtube, that they'd like to keep them, but they refused to eat non-live food. The lament of carnivore-loving humans, everywhere, I suppose!

The older portion of the aquarium was hopping, as well, I was weirdly entranced by this abalone tank. Did you know abalone are huge sea snails??? I didn't!

an abalone is stuck to the wall of tank, and my hand is visible, to provide a size comparison. my thumb-to-pointer finger spread is the same as it's length! it's foot is cream colored and smooth as it sits idly.
I don't think he'd fit in my 5 gallon tank... Zebra Nerite, your job is safe... for now.
Large strands of kelp float along the surface of the tank, and a bright red sea cucumber covered in large stubby spikes rests on them. Since they're almost at the top, the image is mirrored upwards on the underside of the surface of the water.
Not a huge snail, still gorgeous. I pet one earlier in the touch pools!

The seals, otters, and puffins were all out and about, too! Forgive the photography, their windows needed a good scrub! The puffin pics were too poor to share but believe me, they were there, too!

a large dark seal swims along the window into the underwater portion of his tank. There's some algae giving his tank a green hue, and he has his flippers spread like he's flying through the air.
This glorious fur seal friend was swimming laps, showing off his acrobatic skills in the water. I suspect he is a good six or seven feet long nose to tail!
a small white with black splotched seal rests on a ledge at the side of it's pool, in the sun. It's laying in 'banana' pose, with it's head and tail raised up, belly on the ground, eyes squished close, seemingly very content.
This harbor seal was enjoying the sun and heat so much. He was very focused on getting his tan on, and people-watching.

Salmon and other local fish were represented, too!

A view from the bottom of a tank set into the ceiling, full of adolescent salmon. They are 4 inches or so long and silver colored.
The prototype for the reef-view, although not nearly as stunning. Salmon are important, but they don't put on quite the show of sharks and coral!

I got a bit too much sun, too little water, and too much humanity, (seriously woman, stop trying to push your religious trinkets at me, I am not taking them!), but it was a good day, all in all! Hope your weekends were all as awesome!