Gdynia Aquarium is a public aquarium and sea museum operated by the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Gdynia

Gdynia

Gdynia is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland and an important seaport of Gdańsk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea.Located in Kashubia in Eastern Pomerania, Gdynia is part of a conurbation with the spa town of Sopot, the city of Gdańsk and suburban communities, which together...

, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. Previously called the Oceanographic Museum and Sea Aquarium of the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia (1971-2003), the aquarium has a zoological garden status and is situated along Aleja John Paul II on the South Pier.

The museum has operated since 21 June 1971, although attempts were made to establish it in the 1920s and 1930s.

Exhibitions presented within the museum are on oceanography

Oceanography

Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...

 and hydrobiology

Hydrobiology

Hydrobiology is the science of life and life processes in water. Much of modern hydrobiology can be viewed as a sub-discipline of ecology but the sphere of hydrobiology includes taxonomy, economic biology, industrial biology, morphology, physiology etc. The one distinguishing aspect is that all...

, while the aquarium contains both sea and freshwater flora and fauna.

Educational activities were developed during exhibition modernizations. In 2005, a Cinema-Conference Hall was unveiled, as were rooms equipped with microscopes and computer equipment for conducting laboratory activities. In 2007 a Wet Room was opened - a place where one can put their hands into an open-top aquarium tank and touch fish. The Marine Education Section was expanded with a Preschool Room full of soft marine toys, which is very frequently visited by the youngest school children.

Gdynia Aquarium Animals

A total of 215 species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 from 61 families

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

, including:

• 142 fish
  Fish
  Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
  
   species,
• 3 amphibian
  Amphibian
  Amphibians , are a class of vertebrate animals including animals such as toads, frogs, caecilians, and salamanders. They are characterized as non-amniote ectothermic tetrapods...
  
   species,
• 12 reptiles species,
• 58 invertebrates species;

Number of families represented in each group:

• fish – 48,
• reptiles – 3,
• amphibian – 1,
• invertebrates – 9.