Cape Fear Shoals

Cape Fear Shoals is the aquarium's signature exhibit — a 235,000-gallon tank recreating a living shipwreck ecosystem off the Cape Fear coast. Sand tiger sharks, nurse sharks, loggerhead sea turtles, and stingrays cruise through and around the artificial reef structure, just as they would around actual shipwrecks on the ocean floor.

North Carolina's coast has over 5,000 shipwrecks, earning the Outer Banks the nickname "Graveyard of the Atlantic." These wrecks create artificial reef habitat that supports diverse marine communities, illustrating how human-made structures can benefit ocean ecosystems when properly managed.