PDZA's Pacific Seas Aquarium to Open this Weekend

The Point Defiance Zoo, one of the Puget Sound's greatest places for exploring the beauty of the natural world, already had a perfectly serviceable aquarium, in the form of the North Pacific Aquarium. Thanks to a Metro Parks Tacoma bond that voters approved of in 2014, though, we will soon be given something a bit grander in scope and spectacle, with the opening of the new Pacific Seas Aquarium on September 7th.

Moving on from the more modest scale of the previous aquarium, Pacific Seas will feature two enormous tanks: the 280,000-gallon Baja Bay, holding exotic animals like hammerhead sharks; and the 100,000-gallon Northwest Waters, which is dedicated to spotlighting animals native to our region, like rockfish, salmon, and wolf eels. You'll even have the opportunity to see Washington's unofficial mascot, the giant Pacific octopus. The Tidal Touch Zone provides an opportunity for curious attendees of all ages to actually reach their hand into a tank and touch the likes of sea urchins, crabs, and starfish – the types of marine life you'd be likely to see in the Puget Sound at low tide.

Lining the wall of the Tidal Touch Zone is original artwork by Maria Jost, one of Tacoma's most original artists. In addition to creating beauty in Tacoma, Jost also works as a teacher at the Science and Math Institute, which happens to be nestled in Point Defiance.

“I had been recently accepted onto the Tacoma Mural Roster, but had yet to receive a mural project and location,” says Jost. “I suppose my background in the biological sciences and artistic focus on local flora and fauna were attractive qualifications, and the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium reached out to me offering this mural opportunity.”

Titled “Where the Land Meets the Sea,” Jost's mural depicts just that: rendered in watercolor, a vision of the Puget Sound's vibrant ecosystem, beginning with the the tops of hills, and plunging underwater to find a thriving world of plant and animal life. Like Jost's other work, there's a resemblance to illustrations you might find in textbook, though there's a delicacy and a storybook wonder to how she sees nature.

“The aquarium supplied me with a list of species to include within the mural, and I set out to create a piece that is in large part biologically accurate (morphologically at the organism level and also on a larger ecological scale) while also visually memorable and stylistically unique,” says Jost. “As a result, the final mural image depicts a rich and detailed ecosystem, composed largely of organisms like kelp, mussels, and barnacles, which colonize the rocks of the intertidal zone in great numbers. My overall goal for the installation was to capture the intriguing ecology and magical beauty of this marine environment.”

Aside from the spectacle and innate fascination that comes with any visit to a zoo or aquarium, there's also the opportunity to inform and educate the public, which the Pacific Seas Aquarium is intent on doing. The Waves of Change gallery explores how we can best take action and protect our oceans from pollution and other threats. As a whole, the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium also offers classes and other programs to better familiarize yourself with the way our world works in the land, sea, and air.

For the Pacific Seas Aquarium's grand opening weekend, you can experience the undersea magic for free, with the purchase of zoo admission!