Let’s remember when the Seattle Aquarium opened, on this day in 1977 (May 20)
As the Seattle PI put it 42 years ago, minus a day, Seattle entered “the Age of the Aquarium.”
As HistoryLink put it:
On May 20, 1977, nearly a decade after voters approved its construction, the Seattle Aquarium opens, with 1,524 visitors attending on opening day. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer proclaims “the Age of Aquarium.”
Thousands of fingerling salmon were released into Elliott Bay with the hope that they would return to the aquarium fish ladder to spawn. Inside the aquarium, visitors walked along ramps viewing sponges, jellyfish, snails, clams, and crabs, most of them native to Puget Sound. The glassed-in Aquarium Dome allowed visitors to sit on benches and watch fish watching them.
Sea otters performed tricks in return for horse clams, while an octopus clung to a pier. Many of the animals inhabited outside viewing areas in their natural habitat of Puget Sound, enabling visitors to watch sandpipers hunting for food and ducks nesting in grass.
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