The nearest beach is a 215-mile drive away. But if you want to learn about the ocean and meet countless amazing sea creatures up close and personal, you and your class can do it right here in Arizona!

Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium

Just west of Phoenix is Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium, located at 16501 W. Northern Ave. between the Loop 303 and Sarival Rd. The grounds are ginormous, but if you go to the east entrance, you’re right where you can experience the ocean! In fact, visitors have the option of taking in the aquarium and zoo or just the aquarium itself, which will save adults around $10.50 and kids over 3 about $5.

Currently, three large buildings house about 75 aquarium exhibits, which come in all sorts of spectacular shapes and sizes. But in a few months, another big building will open to give visitors even more water wonders!

“We have three buildings—we have the Diversity of Life in Water, we have the Wild & the Wonderful, and we have Predators. And we’re currently working on our next phase, which is going to be River Monster,” explains Assistant Aquarium Curator Chris Faucett.

The new building will showcase a 40,000-gallon freshwater exhibit that’s 10 feet high and 44 feet wide! Next to it will be a giant cylindrical tank with sea turtles zipping about. The building will also house the very playful and mischievous small-clawed otters.

Faucett, who has a degree in marine biology, joined Wildlife World Zoo almost six years ago—before the aquarium portion even opened! But the owner and managers understood the importance of bringing the ocean to Arizonans.

“Kids in the desert don’t (usually) get EXPOSED to this, so it’s a neat experience for them to come and see things that they normally wouldn’t see in their everyday life,” Faucett says. “But our oceans and wildlife affect everybody, so I think it’s important that they understand everything that’s involved with that.”

Overfishing is a good example. “The fishing industry takes stuff out of the ocean, (yet) it’s important to preserve the wildlife. Understanding what we can take sustainably and not take is important. There are lots of species going into extinction from overfishing and over harvesting, so it’s important to understand all of that,” Faucett says.

But fun is really the priority of this IMPRESSIVE aquarium. “I just want kids to have fun coming here,” Faucett says. “For me, if I go somewhere, I’d like to see something that I’ve never seen before.”

At Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium, that could mean seeing a 60,000-gallon circular tank filled with black tip and white tip reef sharks, zebra sharks and a big peacock grouper or even reaching out and touching dozens of big floppy stingrays in the Stingray Touch Tank! Other touch tanks let you hold living sea stars, urchins and some fascinating crustaceans. The giant moray eels, the snowflake morays and the electric eels have faces only a mother could love. But there are also hundreds of beautiful fish to behold like bright blue wrasses, yellow tangs, graceful seahorses and the elegant-yet-venomous lionfish. And if you like penguins, you’ll enjoy the black-footed penguin exhibit.

She adds that having a wow factor encourages kids to learn. In fact, Faucett remembers being little when she and her folks visited the New England Aquarium in Boston. Seeing the fish and the water got her hooked on ocean critters!

She warns that working at an aquarium is far from easy. “Many people have said that this is the hardest job that they’ve ever done. It’s just a lot of work,” Faucett points out. “But it’s incredibly rewarding, so I wouldn’t trade it for anything!”

The animals need to be cared for 365 days of the year. “Animals don’t take holidays; we don’t take holidays” she explains. Staff care for the critters every single day, working in two shifts.

Her day usually starts at 7 a.m. or earlier. Any problems with the tanks or animals need to be taken care of right away. There is a ton of work being done behind the scenes. Giant filtering systems are built onsite and need to run well. Making suitable seawater from groundwater is a big job, too. “I do ordering and the inventory and part of the water quality (salinity, water temperature, etc.), but 90 percent of it is animals and water and getting in the tanks and dirty,” she adds. On the large tanks, the staff put on wetsuits, jump in with the sharks and rays, and get to work cleaning.

For special classroom rates, other offerings and hours: www.wildlifeworld.com

SSEEAA LLIIFFEE AArriizzoonnaa

Who knew that you could learn about and enjoy ocean creatures big and small in an indoor mall?

You can at the amazing SEA LIFE Arizona, which opened last year at Arizona Mills, off of I-10 between Baseline and US60.

“We call it bringing the ocean to the desert, and there was a lot involved,” says Kelly Schwartz, SEA LIFE Arizona’s marketing manager. “The most important thing was letting people know that we were bringing a real quality aquarium brand that intertwined fun and education to Arizona Mills—to a mall.”

And when your main attraction is a 161,000- gallon Ocean View tank, complete with black tip and white tip reef sharks, you make every square inch of your space count!

“So many people are pleasantly surprised when they go through the aquarium and see how many creatures we have, how many displays there are and the size of our creatures,” Schwartz continues. SEA LIFE Arizona is self-guided, but there are workers at key areas (like the touch tanks) and demonstrations, too. Kids also might enjoy the Quiz Trail, where they find answers by reading the Fin Facts posted on the walls throughout the aquarium. The exhibit areas have themes and start with the Harbor display, which focuses on creatures you’d find in the Sea of Cortez, the nearest ocean to Arizona.

Schwartz’s favorite areas are the Bay of Rays, the newly opened Claws (highlighting the aquarium’s crustaceans) and the Ocean Tunnel.

“My favorite exhibit is probably the Bay of Rays. It’s all tropical and has a very south island, Fiji-type flare to it. It also has some really cool creatures—a variety of shark species as well as some different ray species in it,” Schwartz explains. She especially likes the tanks with concave “pop-in” viewing windows that you can stick your head into.

Claws just opened on March 17 and has two of Schwartz’s favorite sea critters: Busta the coconut crab and Lucky the Maine lobster. Busta is APTLY named because his over-sized claws are powerful enough to crack a coconut! Lucky was named because this big lobster was bought through a food distributor and went to SEA LIFE on St. Patrick’s Day instead of the Joe’s Crab Shack next door. Claws has a retro Hollywood B movie feel to it.

But the Ocean Tunnel is sensational and gives you a 360-degree aquarium experience. “There’s water on all sides of you,” she continues. “You can even look through the floor and see the animals swimming beneath you. It’s really neat.”

It was really a challenge to bring an aquarium and 5,000 sea creatures into a mall. And like all aquariums, it takes a ton of work. “We have a full-time staff—a curator and underneath him are five aquarists,” Schwartz says. It has taken some time to get used to her job. "It's a working aquarium where we have animals, we have quarantine, there's a water lab, there’s just so many intricacies that I would have never even thought of,” she continues.

“It’s definitely worth the effort. I think it’s even more important that aquariums are in areas where the ocean isn’t because the children and families that are living here might not always be able to go to the ocean and snorkel, scuba dive or something like that.”

Schwartz adds that the coolest thing she has done so far is to feed the sharks. “We pole-feed all of our sharks—you put the fish on the end of the pole and hold it out into the tank,” she explains.

For classroom offerings & more info, go to www.visitsealife.com/Arizona/

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