Visitors to the Maui Ocean Center enjoy a combination of indoor and outdoor displays with an emphasis on exploring and discovering the ocean and it inhabitants. Opened in March of 1998, the 4 ½-acre park is the largest tropical aquarium in the Western Hemisphere. The site has dozens of innovative exhibits and habitat galleries where you can come face-to-face with garden eels, frogs, fish and a shy octopus. There is also a touch pool where you can feel the smooth spines of a bright orange slate pencil urchin. One of the most popular attractions is a 750,000-gallon tank with hundreds of fish native to Hawaii as well as white tip, black tip and gray sharks. An acrylic tunnel going through the tanks makes you feel as if you were in the middle of the ocean. The Reef building has smaller tanks displaying other marine species including jellyfish, octopus, shrimp, moray eels and reef fish. Another exhibit pays homage to Hawaii’s State Marine Mammal – the humpback whale. At the Whale Discovery Center, visitors can watch video footages of these great creatures and learn how a pod of humpback whales mate, feed and migrate halfway around the world. A new exhibit at the center, “Hawaiians & the Sea,” tells a compelling story of the Hawaiian’s special connection with the kai and moana (shore and open ocean). Display items include a hale lawai`a (fisherman’s house); a wa`a (canoe); traditional fishing hooks and other implements important to the Hawaiian fisherman. During the summer months, the center has a special program for children ages 6 – 12 to learn about the ocean and its inhabitants. The Keiki Ocean Activities program is held every Tuesday from 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. and cost $8 per child. Located on Highway 30 at Ma`alaea Harbor Village on the Southwest shore of Maui. Parking at the Maui Ocean Center is free.