The Seattle Aquarium’s new Ocean Pavilion is open now and ready to welcome visitors into a warm, bright and vibrant underwater world teeming with life.

The Ocean Pavilion, located centrally on the newly revitalized downtown Seattle waterfront that connects to the thriving Pike Place Market, provides an immersive experience for individuals of all ages. The space tells the story of ocean life, including the wonders of a reef ecosystem in the Coral Triangle—a region in the Indo-Pacific so rich in biodiversity that it’s been called “the Amazon of the ocean.” Visitors can come face to face with 3,500 animals and plants: sharks, rays, schooling fish, mangroves, nearly 30 species of coral and so much more. Visitors also have the chance to see how the animals are being cared for in a special behind-the-scenes animal care area.

Meg McCann, chief operating officer at the Seattle Aquarium, shares that the Ocean Pavilion is a breathtaking way to experience the underwater world.

“As soon as you walk through the doors, you’re transported to Indonesia,” she explains. “When you go up to The Reef, for example, the walls surround you...you stand at eye level with all these incredible animals, like the Indo-Pacific leopard shark. It’s hard to know where you end and where the habitat begins. We often see people with their arms outstretched...it’s really powerful and impressive and shows that there’s only one ocean and we all bear connectivity to it.”

The Aquarium’s expansion is the first of several planned steps to revitalize the campus and has been a decades-long process. It was designed from the inside out – first considering the type of marine animals that will live there and how they will best thrive.

The planning process also included members of the Coast Salish and urban Indigenous communities. Visitors will be able to see a variety of displays from Indigenous artists and leaders from the Pacific Northwest, Indo-Pacific and other locations, inside the Ocean Pavilion and around the grounds outside of the Aquarium.

By the summer of 2025, the Aquarium hopes to welcome over a million people to the Ocean Pavilion, helping inspire them to discover how each of us has an important role in restoring ocean health.

“At the very heart of our Aquarium is the fact that we’re a conduit to the rest of the world via these incredible habitats,” McCann said. “All of us are responsible for the health of Earth’s one ocean.”

Visiting the Ocean Pavilion not only provides a unique learning opportunity about marine life and their distinct habitats, but it also supports the organization’s growing work to restore healthy populations of endangered marine species. For example, the Aquarium helped launch a first-of-its-kind global coalition—ReShark—to restore threatened shark and ray populations to marine protected areas. The coalition’s first project is to recover Indo-Pacific leopard sharks, the same species you can see in the Ocean Pavilion, in Indonesia. In fact, the shark at the Ocean Pavilion will directly contribute to restoring his species. ReShark’s goal is to release 500 sharks in protected waters off the coast of Indonesia over the next several years.

“It’s impossible to leave the Ocean Pavilion without feeling called to act on behalf of the ocean,” McCann explained. “It will be so exciting to see people moved into action and then see what that ripple impact will be.”

The ocean is calling! Buy tickets and learn more about the Ocean Pavilion here.