Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach offers a wide variety of sea life exhibits, as well as unique experiences. Visitors can view coral reefs, come face-to-face with dangerous creatures, and touch sting rays.
Other experiences, at an additional cost, give guests a chance to swim with stingrays, dive with sharks, or take a ride on a glass bottomed boat among other options.
The Rainbow Rock exhibit features the colorful Indo-Pacific Coral Reef where all of the colors of the rainbow can be found. Visitors can discover thousands of colorful fish from the Pacific Ocean's tropical islands as they swim through and around the delicate reef structure. Another reef exhibit is the Dangerous Reef. This exhibit contains thousands of fish as well, in every size and shape. The Dangerous Reef is the most popular and largest exhibit at Ripley's Aquarium. Visitors leisurely explore the exhibit on a 340-foot long moving glidepath as they wind through the completely immersive tunnel, coming face-to-face with giant stingrays, snappers, sawfish, a green sea turtle, squirrelfish, and huge sharks.
The Discovery Center at Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach offers visitors a chance to hold horseshoe crabs among other activities at this multimedia, interactive educational center and playground designed to fascinate guests of all ages. The center invites guests to learn by participation, including solving puzzles. The Systems Control area lets visitors see the computer controlled systems that filter the aquarium's water and keep the animals alive. Millions of gallons of quality tested salt water is constantly circulated through huge computer controlled filters and pumps to assure the marine animals' well-being at all times.
Ripley's Aquarium's Living Gallery displays a collection of delicate marine life, such as jellies, sea anemones, living corals, weedy sea dragons, and Pacific Giant Octopus as art. The coral reefs of the ocean create a vibrantly colorful underwater oasis that provides protection for many types of undersea life. Some of the animals in the coral reef actually look like plants as they flow back and forth in the currents. Just a few examples of these plant-like animals at the aquarium include brain corals, hammer corals, and the giant clam.
The Ray Bay at Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach offers visitors an opportunity to reach out and touch stingrays at the shallow end of the tank. In nature, stingrays spend much of their lifetime hiding from predators by burying themselves in the sand. At the aquarium, however, the enjoy the spotlight and will even eat out of divers' hands.
Friendship Flats is another exhibit at Ripley's Aquarium where guests can get up close and personal with rays by touching the their dark top-sides as they glide by. Educators are also available nearby to answer any questions about these unusual marine creatures, as well as to assure the safety of both visitors and the rays. The Rio Amazon exhibit replicates the lush, primeval environment of the Amazon Rainforest. Visitors have the opportunity to view poison dart frogs, Arapaima, armored catfish, freshwater stingrays, and even the feared and insatiable piranha.
1110 Celebrity Circle, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Phone: 843-916-0888, website, Map
