If you want to feel like you are at the bottom of the Ocean with all the Ocean creatures, without really going to the bottom of the Ocean, then the Maui Ocean Center is for you. The Maui Ocean Center is located in Maalea, Maui Hawaii next to the Maalea Harbor. As you look through the many exhibits you begin to feel like you are in the middle of the ocean. The Jelly Fish exhibit was one of my favorite. I've never seen a Jelly Fish before, but in this exhibit there is a tank with hundreds. When you enter the Large Aquarium and see the Sharks, Manteray and other fish swimming together and then you walk through the tunnel with all the fish swimming all around you, it is "Awesome." I've never seen the bottom (Or the Top for that matter) of a Manteray.

Maui Ocean Center
$22/adults, $15/children

We are aquarium enthusiasts, having our own 300-gallon, salt water aquarium in our living room. We go to the local aquarium on every family vacation. The Maui Ocean Center was a great way to spend a couple of hours.

For a change, we were actually in the right place at the right time to watch the divers feed the fish in the huge central tank, and then the shark feeding. The sharks are well-fed and weren’t very hungry, but it was still exciting to watch.
Our favorite exhibit was Turtle Lagoon and we got some great photos of the turtles coming up to nibble the algae from the lava rock. Hammerhead Harbor was also very interesting, with small hammerhead sharks lurking under the surface.

If you've had your fill of sun and sand, laying on the beach, or hiking through the rain forests of Maui and are looking for a relaxing indoor recreation, this is a good place to stop.
It's a little bit pricey at $18.50 for adults and $12.50 for children, but if you can afford it, this is a great substitute for scuba diving to see the local marine life.
It's a very well-put-together Ocean Center with some very impressive specimens. The seahorse tank I found incredibly interesting, and there aren't many who won't appreciate the 750,000-gallon open ocean tank, where you can stand and watch a host of sharks swimming along the glass, and wander through the tunnel in the tank, where you can get a 240-degree view and manta rays swim right overhead.
They have an excellent gift shop and free parking. This would be a great thing to do with the family or for an informative and relaxing afternoon indoors.
They are open daily from 9 to 5pm. And as with most things on Maui, it is fairly easy to get to.
Take Highway 30 from west Maui toward south Maui, and just past the Ma'alaea Harbor turn right on Ma'alaea Road.

Who would think you could spend 4 hours at an aquarium? Well, we did. It was kind of a drizzly day, so we thought this would be a good activity. It was amazing. As a former owner of a saltwater aquarium, I can attest to how difficult it is to maintain perfect water balance in a closed system. The Maui Ocean Center is doing everything right. The fish all look very healthy and well fed. The water for the size animals it houses is pretty clear. We are one of those geeky fish couples who know all the names of the fish without looking at the card. There is a hammerhead shark tank, a turtle tank, a jelly cylinder you can walk around, and the giant community tank that has everything from the tiniest damsel fish to a very fat tiger shark. Kids and adults alike were obviously enjoying themselves. Maui Ocean Center

The Maui Ocean Center is probably the best tourism addition to this island since they invented snorkeling. This is all family entertainment. We rented a magic wand audio guide to share between the two of us. However, that novelty wore off soon, because the narrator was a bit long-winded. The signage along the way was well done, well placed, and sufficient for our needs. The dynamic of the surge zone was interesting and something that isn’t addressed in some other aquariums. It is easy to spend a long time in the Living Reef building. The Turtle Lagoon, Tide Pool and Hammerhead Harbor are worth a visit on the way to the Whale Discovery Center. Here, quiz questions spark an interest in the exhibits. Hawaiians and the Sea is an anthropological exhibit placed at the entrance to the Open Ocean Aquarium. A 54-foot-long glass tunnel allows the visitor to feel what it would be like to have all those fish swimming around you.

But wait, there’s more! The center has a good gift shop and two restaurants. One is a family-oriented fast-food place called Reef Café. The tables where outside and had no sun protection. We ate at the Seascape Ma’alaea Restaurant, an open-air but completely roofed structure overlooking the harbor. It had island-style cuisine. I had a crab cake salad with asparagus that may have been the best meal I had on Maui. Entrée and beverage averaged about $18 a piece.

We had not known what to expect when we arrived. I would suggest you don’t cut your time short here. Start at opening time and plan to have lunch here. We saw one family racing through the exhibits with dad repeating, "We’re going to miss the plane!" every few minutes. Don’t do that!

Before returning to our condo, we crossed the parking lot to the Harbor Village, where we checked out a couple of shops and had dessert at the Café O’Lei. We were seated on the lanai overlooking the harbor. That was good entertainment, and we spent $10 apiece for good coffee and remarkable desserts. Mine was a pineapple upside-down cake with a scoop of Lapperts vanilla-bean ice cream on the side on a plate drizzled with caramel sauce. Wow!