WILDLIFE & CONSERVATION
Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park
Okaloosa County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
One of Florida's oldest marine parks, on Okaloosa Island since 1955, with dolphins, sea lions and a sea turtle rescue center.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park opened in August 1955 at 1010 Miracle Strip Parkway SE on Okaloosa Island in Fort Walton Beach. It keeps dolphins, sea lions, harbor seals, otters, penguins, alligators and sea turtles, with scheduled shows and animal encounters through the day. Its C.A.R.E. Center takes in and rehabilitates stranded sea turtles and other marine animals from the coast. Fifteen scientists and fifty local residents incorporated the company in early 1954, and the park itself was the work of J. B. Siebenaler, a marine researcher from the University of Miami's Marine Laboratory who went by Brandy. It was built on a six-hundred-foot stretch of Okaloosa Island, and the main dolphin habitat took eleven months to construct out of battleship steel. The first habitats held sharks, dolphins, rays and sea turtles. The Living Sea exhibit followed in 1956, with viewing windows running from the sea floor to the surface. The park claims several firsts: the first marine park to put on underwater shows using scuba gear, the first to record a dolphin jumping twenty-one feet, and the first to raise a stranded baby bottlenose dolphin successfully. The C.A.R.E. Center takes volunteers and runs education programs alongside the rescue work
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