National Aquarium of New Zealand

National Aquarium of New Zealand
National Aquarium of New Zealand
	National Aquarium of New Zealand's logo
	Entrance to the aquarium
	39°30′03″S 176°55′08″E / 39.5007°S 176.9189°E
Date opened	1976
Location	Napier, New Zealand
No. of animals	1500+
No. of species	50+
Volume of largest tank	1.5 million litres
Major exhibits	Oceanarium, fish, reptiles, kiwi, penguins
Owner	Napier City Council
Website	www.nationalaquarium.co.nz

The National Aquarium of New Zealand, formerly Napier Aquarium, is a public aquarium on Marine Parade in Napier, New Zealand. It was started in 1957 and moved to its present location in 1976. It is owned by Napier City Council. In addition to many fish species, exhibits include kiwi, tuatara, turtles, little penguins and some lizards.

History

In 1957, members of Napier's Thirty Thousand Club and the Hawke's Bay Aquarium and Water Garden Society decided to create a public aquarium with tropical fish and unusual specimens of local fish in the basement of the War Memorial Hall that was being built on Marine Parade.^[1]

The aquarium moved to its current location on Marine Parade in 1976.^[2] In its first year of its life it attracted 230,000 visitors at a time when the population of Napier was about 50,000. In its first 5 years of operation over 750,000 people visited.

The aquarium acquired piranhas from Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., in 1979, trading seahorses for them.^[3] In 2019 the 21 elderly piranhas remaining were euthanased, as new government rules no longer allowed them to be kept in the aquarium's tanks.^[4]

In 2002 the aquarium underwent a NZ$8 million extension and renovation which included the addition of a 1.5 million litre oceanarium with a 50m acrylic tunnel and the replacement of all the original tanks with newly constructed ones. It was renamed the National Aquarium of New Zealand.^[2]

Since 2017, aquarium staff have voted for the best behaved and naughtiest Penguin of the Month from the resident colony of little penguins, which has proved very popular on social media.^[5]