The newest residents of the Aquarium recently made the journey from nearby Marineland to their new home and have settled into their new life-like surroundings very quickly.

Penguin Cove has been carefully designed to replicate the penguins’ natural beach habitat to ensure they feel right at home in their new abode.

Walk into the new exhibit and see a sandy beach, made up of 28 tonnes of golden sand donated by Winstone Aggregates. Driftwood, rocks and a swimming pool with underwater viewing complete the exhibit – everything that allows the 10 penguins to go about their normal routine of fishing and feeding during the day, then returning to the beach for play and sleep at night.

All this is waiting for you, your friends and family to enjoy and experience at the National Aquarium of New Zealand this summer. See you soon!

Penguin Close Encounter

Get ‘hands on’ with the cute and fascinating Little Penguins. Help prepare their food, hand feed each bird and get your photo taken with one of your newest friends! Find out how close a Little Penguin lives to you!

Time: Available daily at 1pm
Duration: Approx 45 minutes
Participants: Maximum of 4
Cost: $60 per person

Aquarium Alligators celebrate one year anniversary

The juvenile female alligators have been lent to the aquarium for a two year period by Butterfly Creek in Auckland.

The toothy pair called 'Fiona' and 'Cheryl' which are almost six years old and one metre long, originate from an alligator farm in Australia, but have grown up at Butterfly Creek.

The alligators were collected by aquarium staff and made the trip to Napier by road.

National Aquarium of New Zealand manager Rob Yarrall says the pair travelled very well. When we arrived in Auckland the alligators were ‘hanging out’ in their normal enclosure. We took with us two specialist made containers for them to travel in to ensure they were well protected and comfortable during their journey.

"Apart from a couple of stops along the way to check on our new friends, the pair travelled without a hitch. They seem pleased to be in their new home and are settling in well," says Mr Yarrall.

Fiona and Cheryl share residences on the first floor of the aquarium with Terrapins in a Florida Everglades themed enclosure which the aquarium team have built to mirror their natural American habitat.

The Alligators are now on display at the National Aquarium so come in and check these cool little girls out!

Dinosaur Discovery Display

The Dinosaur Discovery Display is now open for public to visit! There are still finishing touches happening to the new Waste Aware classroom before it is opened.

Baby Piranha

Our 40 juvenile piranha are now about one year old. They may look cute and small but these little fish already have mighty sharp little teeth.

The babies have travelled from the far shores of Germany where they were bred and arrived in New Zealand where they were placed in quarantine in New Plymouth for six weeks before being transported to our Aquarium.

When they arrived each fish was individually packed in their own tall narrow plastic bag containing water and oxygen. No neighbours are allowed in a bag because in the dark if piranha bump into one another their natural instinct is to attack. Let’s just say many bags would turn up empty! Because the fish are tropical, the polystyrene containers holding the bags had heat pads on the base to keep them nice and toasty warm.

As babies our new arrivals are silver with dark spots, but as they grow older their colour changes. With maturity there spots will fade and they will develop a silver glitter effect and a red underbelly.

Our new babies have settled in so well to their new home. In fact, when the bags got emptied into their tank at the Aquarium, they zipped and zoomed around in complete excitement! They have now quietened down and are schooling around their tank.

Come and see our new babies soon. You’ll find them on the first floor of the National Aquarium of New Zealand.