Auckland - Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World

East of Hobson Bay, in the Orakei district is Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, a popular tourist attraction since 1985. Visitors walk in long acrylic tunnels through huge tanks in which they can observe large numbers of fish of all sizes, including sharks and rays. There is a display devoted to the underwater explorations of Kelly Tarlton (1935-85), in the course of which he studied the marine fauna of the south Pacific and investigated wrecks lying off the coasts of New Zealand. In Antarctic Encounter, a reconstructed research station with a small colony of penguins, visitors can experience within a Snow Cat the difficult conditions under which scientists work in Antarctica.