Waikiki Aquarium

As an avid hobbyist I will always add an aquarium to the destination list of places I visit. I fortunately had a family trip to Hawaii a few years ago.  Hawaii has two aquariums, one of which is the Waikiki Aquarium. I have wanted to visit since I started in this hobby, as all the reefing related books in the 1980s and 1990s had images and writeups from this facility. When I visited the Waikiki Aquarium it was like a pilgrimage to see with my own eyes the longest-living giant clam in any aquarium in the world.

The aquarium was just a short walk from the Waikiki Sheraton hotel I was staying at. Though it was a very small facility along the shoreline of Waikiki Beach I was amazed at the displays it had. The whole facility can be walked through in about an hour but you can sit and stare at specifics to extend your stay. Some of the notable displays, in my opinion, were the outdoor coral systems and clam tanks. Being a Tridacna glutton I would give up all my tanks just to have as a nice of a dedicated clam tank as the one they had outdoors.

Ultimately it was a great destination for a family with young kids. You can enter, enjoy, and move on before you hear “Daddy my feet hurts…”