San Francisco’s Aquarium of The Bay: Behind the Scenes

Like every family, we love a good museum. So when San Francisco’s Aquarium of the Bay invited us to take its behind-the-scenes tour, we were ready to go. We’d seen plenty of fish behind glass, but getting to see them up close and personal was a new experience.

A welcome note from Katie Schmidt at the Aquarium.

Our tour guide was Jessica. She was an expert in all matters aquatic. She took us through the “kitchen,” where they prepare the hundreds of pounds of food that gets fed to the fish each week. They had everything from brine shrimp (aka Sea Monkeys) to dried fish to feed the sharks, octopii (is that the plural of octopus??), seastars and more.

Then we saw the holding tanks where newcomers stay until they’ve adapted to their new home. The Aquarium gets a lot of its animals from the San Francisco Bay, and they put the animals back when it’s no longer conducive for them to stay in the tanks. Sort of catch and release. I like that.

We saw leopard shark females that were recovering from being bitten during mating season (boys will be boys). The entire lifecycle of jellyfish (they are so tiny!). Tanks designed to keep octopussesses in (they’re notorious escape artists). The tool they use to help a giant sturgeon find his food (he’d lost the whiskers that helped him find it).

We walked above the clear tube that people down below were walking through to see sea life. It was a bit scary but definitely felt VIP! After our 45 minute tour, we went down to the actual aquarium and enjoyed the exhibits. There’s a great tidepool where you can touch stingrays, bat rays and seastars, though my son would have none of the touching!

Here are some fun facts about the Aquarium:

Over 20,000 aquatic animals from the San Francisco Bay and surrounding waters live in Aquarium of the Bay.

Aquarium of the Bay’s collection features nearly 200 different species of sharks, skates, rays, octopus, jelly fish, rock fish, flat fish, eels, sea stars and other aquatic animals.

Aquarium of the Bay has maintained a moon jellyfish culture for the past eight years.  All moon jellies on display at the aquarium were born and raised here.

The Aquarium is approximately 50,000 square feet and its exhibits hold over one million gallons of filtered Bay water. The Aquarium features two signature tunnel tanks with moving sidewalks that total 300 feet in length.  The tanks are made from 2.5” thick acrylic and hold over 700,000 gallons of filtered Bay water.

The tour was just $6 more per person than admission (which was $16.95 for adults, $8 for children and seniors, or $39.95 for 2 adults and 2 children) and I highly recommend adding it on your next visit!

Susan Payton is President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations and writes the blog The Marketing Eggspert.

Disclosure: This review is based on a complimentary admission provided by San Francisco’s Aquarium of The Bay. We received no other compensation and no requirements that we express a particular point of view.

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Tags: family activities, travel, Vacations
Posted in Aquariums/Parks/Zoos | 1 Comment »