The Oregon Coast Aquarium is an aquarium in Newport in the US state of Oregon. Opened in 1992, the facility sits on 23 acres (9.3 ha) along Yaquina Bay near the Pacific Ocean. The aquarium was home to Keiko, the orca who starred in the movie Free Willy, from January 1996 until September 9, 1998, when he was shipped to Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. USA Today considers the Oregon Coast Aquarium world-class and Coastal Living magazine ranks the it among the top ten aquariums in North America.
Famous quotes containing the words oregon, coast and/or aquarium:
“When Paul Bunyan’s loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)