WILDLIFE & CONSERVATION
Marineland Dolphin Adventure
Flagler County · Atlantic Coast
The world's first oceanarium, opened in 1938 as a film studio, now a small hands-on dolphin center south of St. Augustine.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
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. The site covers 125 acres between the ocean and the Intracoastal on A1A south of St. Augustine, chosen partly because Whitney believed this stretch of coast got fewer hurricanes. It was Marine Studios until the early 1960s. At its height around 400,000 people came in a year; after Walt Disney World opened in 1971 and SeaWorld Orlando in 1973 that fell to about 20,000. Hurricanes in 1999 closed it for two months, and more in 2003 and 2004 forced a full rebuild. The Georgia Aquarium bought it in 2011, and ownership has changed again since. Today it runs hands-on educational programs where visitors get in with the dolphins, along with cownose rays, fish, invertebrates and sea turtles, and summer camps for children aged 7 to 17. Some of the oldest dolphins in human care live here
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