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The Steinhart Aquarium is an aquatic world of 165 individual tanks exhibiting the interactions of more than 6,000 representatives of diverse underwater environments. Visitors come face to face with nearly 600 species of fishes, large invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians and even black-footed penguins. Each of the aquarium's tanks are painstakingly created to reflect the natural environments of the inhabitants. Thanks to the wide range of expertise and constant care of the aquarium staff, visitors can explore the underbelly of the Amazon, the muddy floor of the Mississippi River, the California kelp forest, a Hawaiian coral reef, a Sierran trout stream, an African lake, a Himalayan stream, or even a fisheye view of our own backyard – the San Francisco Bay. Highlights of the aquarium include the Fish Roundabout where visitors stand in the middle of a 100,000-gallon circular tank filled with fast swimming, open ocean fishes. The Touch Tidepool gives visitors a "hands-on" experience with sea stars, anemones, hermit crabs and urchins. The 6,000 gallon Coral Reef shows dazzling reef fishes swimming in a complex mini-ecosystem composed of green fuzzy mushroom anemones, brown zoanthid soft corals, and hard corals like opalescent bubble corals, pink treelike octocorals, and golden-yellow and flourescent green reef-building stony corals. In the Shark Tank visitors can view sleek, beautiful, tropical reef sharks as they glide through the warm waters and coral caves of this 46-by-21 foot environment. The living coral reef tank shows the true intricacy of living coral and colorful tropical fish, usually only seen by snorkelers and scuba divers. Children and adults enjoy watching the adorable Black-Footed Penguins waddle, swim, and gulp down fish at daily feedings.
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