Kids can see these - barracuda, queen angels, and lobster - and more of the amazing sea life under the tropical waters of the Florida Keys without getting wet! These photos were taken not with an underwater camera, but on terra firma, at a wonderful place where kids can see up-close the creatures that live in the water surrounding the Florida Keys!

For a fun day in Key West, combine a visit to the new Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center with the Key West Aquarium. Start out In the cool comfort of the beautiful, interactive Eco-Discovery Center, located at the end of Southard Street on the way to Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park. Interactive, touch-screen exhibits explain the remarkable coastal ecosystem of the Florida Keys. Kids can push buttons to see where the reefs and wrecks are, both fertile sea life habitats. Exhibits show coral spawning, and The Living Reef Exhibit is filled with coral and colorful tropical fish which make up the nearby reef, the only living coral reef within the continental U. S. It’s a great way for kids of all ages to get a feel for this special, fragile environment.

Not far away (as the crow flies) is one of the little treasures of the Keys - the Key West Aquarium. There, really up close, kids can see the sea life that lives in the surrounding waters. The large wall tanks are at “kid” level, so they can get right up to the glass to watch giant, bright green eels slither through rocks, or they can come nose to nose with a goliath grouper! They might be able to get close if they were snorkeling, but not this close!

They’ll see territorial barracuda lying almost motionless, watching over “their” spot, and tarpon swimming lazily in the outdoor Atlantic Shores exhibit, a free-form pool surrounded by natural mangroves. They’ll see colorful parrotfish chomping incessantly at coral and rock, and giant lobster walking spider-like across the sand. Brilliant tropical fish, sparkling like jewels, dart in, out, and around colorful coral, soft and hard, and anemones sway in the current. A myriad of other interesting, if not as glamorous, indigenous fish - snapper, grouper, snook, sheephead, ladyfish - swim about in life-like environments. In two large indoor pools, nurse sharks wait to be fed, and stingrays do their water ballet routines. Outside, in a large enclosure fed by the waters of the adjacent Key West Harbor, a 7′ and a 9′ sand shark, several black nose sharks, and two very large nurse sharks swim about.

While kids love the colorful fish and get excited about seeing the predatory fish, what they come back for, again and again, is to reach their hand down into the Touch Tank to gently pick up hermit crabs, conch, sea cucumber, and horseshoe crabs. They are fascinated!

Kids love the Key West Aquarium. It’s just their size.
  

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