Fun and Learning

Fun and learning Corner

There are so many things to discover

Read about sea turtles, sand tiger sharks, wind energy and more at our virtual bookshelf.
Get to know a new animal every month with photos, videos and cool facts. 
You can help save animals in the wild by doing simple things in your own home.

Read a book from our virtual bookshelf!

You can help Save ANimals

simple actions can help in a big way

What action can I do?

This month you can help animals by using a reusable water bottle!
Say "No!" to single-use plastic bottles.  

Why should I help?

Did you know that about 100.7 billion plastic beverage bottles were sold in the US in 2014? That's about 315 bottles per person. Not all of those bottles end up at the recycling center - a lot of those bottles end up in the ocean. About 8 million tons of plastic ends up in our ocean every year! Plastic is a valuable resource - but plastic pollution is a huge and unecessary problem. However, it's in our hands to fix that problem! We can refill our REUSABLE WATER BOTTLES several times instead of using a single-use plastic bottle only once.    

how can I help?

• Grab your reusable water bottle! It's that easy!  
   
• You can refill your reusable water bottles more than once instead of using a single-use bottle only once.
   
• If you do use a single-use plastic bottle be sure to RECYCLE it! These plastics can be made into t-shirts and other bottles! 
   
• There are many resources on the internet that you can check out. Here are a few: Plastic Ocean Project, 5Gyres, Plastic Oceans.  
   

The Ocean is In Our Hands!

The NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores is proud to have joined a collection of 19 aquariums across the country to launch the In Our Hands campaign.
The campaign's initiative is for everyone to reduce single-use plastic and choose alternatives instead.
We're walking the walk too - replacing plastic straws with paper straws in our snack bars and adding water bottle refilling stations next to our water fountains.

The future of the ocean and lakes and rivers is In Our Hands!
You can help and do your part!
To learn more, visit OURHANDS.org

Meet Our Animal of the Month: Sharks

From Top, Right, Bottom, Left: Nurse, Sandbar, sand Tiger, Bonnethead
 

• Nurse sharks are one of the many sharks that can breathe by opening and closing their mouths to pump water over their gills, which is why you may often see them resting on the bottom.
   
• Sandbar sharks carry their eggs inside their body and give birth to live young. Females can give birth to an average of 10 pups. 
   
• Sand tiger sharks are known to gather in large numbers on some North Carolina wrecks. Divers from around the world come to the North Carolina coast just to dive on these wrecks with sharks. 
   
• Bonnethead sharks are the smallest hammerhead species in North Carolina. They feed mostly on crustaceans.  
   
• More than 50 of the more than 500 shark species worldwide have been documented in North Carolina waters - including white sharks, also known as great white sharks. Sharks can hear sound underwater for miles, detect odors within hundreds of yards and sense pressure changes created by currents or movement. Sharks have electro-reception that can detect tiny electrical fields created by a prey's muscular movement.
   
• Some sharks have bursts of speed up to 23 miles per hour, however, most sharks maintain a cruising speed of about 5.75 miles per hour.  
   
• Sharks have been around for millions of years and help keep marine ecosystems in balance - they eat weak and wounded animals, keeping fish populations healthy, and are also scavengers which is an important role in the marine ecosystem.  
   
• Shark populations have been on the decline due to overfishing, environmental damage, lack of conservation plans in other shark-fishing nations, and misunderstanding. There are so many resources to learn more about sharks. Check out OCEARCH - which generates real-time critial scientific data that was previously unatainable.