Clearwater Marine Aquarium
Pinellas County. The aquarium is a nonprofit founded in 1972, and it is a working animal hospital that the public is allowed into rather than a display collection. The building was a water treatment plant.
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Where can you see dolphins in Florida?
Bottlenose dolphins live year round in almost every bay, pass and inlet in Florida, and the sheltered water is where you actually see them.
Sarasota Bay holds a resident community that has been studied continuously since the 1970s. Charlotte Harbor, Tampa Bay, the Indian River Lagoon and St Joseph Bay all have resident groups. For a certainty rather than a chance, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Pinellas County is a working rescue hospital, the Dolphin Research Center on Grassy Key in Monroe County is a research facility open to visitors, and Marineland in Flagler County has been on that coast since 1938. Feeding or chasing wild dolphins is against federal law and it carries a real penalty.
The places named in this answer.
Dolphin Research Center
Monroe County. The site has been working with dolphins since 1958, when the fisherman Milton Santini ran Santini's Porpoise School here; one of his dolphins, Mitzi, played the title role in the film Flipper and in its sequel of 1964.
Open the guide →Marineland Dolphin Adventure
Flagler County. Marineland opened on June 23, 1938, as Marine Studios, built by W. Douglas Burden, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Sherman Pratt and Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy, a grandson of Leo Tolstoy. It was the first oceanarium anywhere, built to display marine life and, just as much, to film it: Creature from the Black Lagoon was shot here in 1954 and its sequel the year after.
Open the guide →Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park
Charlotte County. The state gives its size as 42,518 acres in one place and about 46,000 in another, and most of that is not walkable ground at all: it is mangrove shoreline, tidal creek and salt marsh held undeveloped to keep the estuary intact.
Open the guide →Mote Science Education Aquarium (Mote SEA)
Sarasota County. Mote SEA opened on October 8, 2025, at Nathan Benderson Park, serving Sarasota and Manatee counties, and it replaces the aquarium Mote ran for decades on City Island. The building runs to 146,000 square feet on a twelve-acre campus.
Open the guide →More questions like this.
Where is the birdwatching in Florida?
Florida sits on the Atlantic flyway with the Gulf on one side, so it carries both resident wading birds and everything passing through.
Where can you see alligators and Florida wildlife?
Alligators are in fresh and brackish water in all 67 counties, so the question is where you can watch them safely from dry land.
Where are the glass-bottom boats in Florida?
Silver Springs in Marion County ran the first glass-bottom boats anywhere, from 1878, and they still run over the same spring vents, where the water is clear enough to read the bottom thirty feet down and the boats pass over sunken film sets left from the Tarzan and Sea Hunt years.
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