NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores

North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores is a great place to visit in the middle of the day when it's too hot to go to the beach! The temporary exhibits are often great. There was a dinosaur walk outdoors which was so cool! Huge dinosaurs roared and rolled their eyes, and one even shot water!

Two lookout points are a good place for spotting birds in the sound. Outside there is also a snake area where you can see cottonmouth snakes, eastern rattlesnakes, and copperheads.
Inside, check out the huge tank with sharks- it's fun to watch the divers enter the tank and try to keep the sharks away from each other with sticks. There's a giant lobster, an octopus, jellies, grass carp, green tree frogs, catfish, screech owls, corn snakes, an albino turtle, baby Carolina alligators, spotted turtles, longnose gars, tropical fish and a yellow eel, sea horses, and river otters.
A display of shells, sharks teeth, and sand dollars is nice so you can identify ones you found. There's also a touch tank of rays.  Kids will enjoy the sculptures the size of them, such as a frog, a dinosaur egg they can climb into, and a turtle. Toddlers have a play area all to themselves. The aquarium is more darkly lit than the other North Carolina aquariums.
After, swim at nearby Pine Knoll Shores Beach (there are several beach parking lots on Salter Path Rd opposite the beach) or seventeen minutes to the west at Emerald Isle Beach!
While on the Crystal Coast, check out Fort Macon State Park, an interesting and pretty place that is a 19 minute drive to the east.

Directions

North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores is located at 1 Roosevelt Blvd, Pine Knoll Shores, NC 28512.
Open daily 9-5.
Admission is $13 for adults, $12 for seniors and military, and $11 for children aged 3-12. If you have a membership to another center like a science center or zoo, you might get a discount. 

Click on map for interactive view