WILDLIFE & CONSERVATION
St. Lucie County Aquarium
St. Lucie County · Atlantic Coast
A small county aquarium in Fort Pierce built around a living coral reef model the Smithsonian moved down from Washington.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The aquarium runs to about 5,000 square feet with six main exhibits and roughly 8,000 gallons of water in total, which makes it small by the standards of the big coastal aquariums and worth the visit for a different reason. Its centerpiece is the Smithsonian Marine Ecosystems Exhibit, a 3,000-gallon working model of a coral reef ecosystem that was built and studied at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington and transferred here in 2000. It is a closed system, run as a piece of science rather than a display, and it sits beside the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, which does research on the Indian River Lagoon. The remaining tanks cover the lagoon itself and the coast around it, which is the point: this is the water immediately outside the door. St. Lucie County operates it, and it makes a sensible hour alongside the manatee center nearby
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