Aquarium Gets New Name

When it opened in 1992, it was the New Jersey State Aquarium and focused on New Jersey fish.

Now, it's going more exotic.

The Camden facility, which closed last week for the completion of a $40 million expansion, will now be known as Adventure Aquarium, according to the Steiner + Associates, the Columbus, Ohio, company that will run it.

The public's first look inside won't come until the aquarium reopens in May at twice its former size.

New features include a West African river exhibit with two hippopotami, crocodiles and birds and an area where visitors will be able to swim with sharks.

The executive director of the aquarium will be Greg Charbeneau, who had been vice president for husbandry for the nonprofit group that previously ran the aquarium.

The aquarium was one of the first tourist attractions on the Camden waterfront, formerly the industrial heart of a city long in decline.

It is joining a handful of other for-profit aquariums in the U.S., including the Newport Aquarium in northern Kentucky, also run by Steiner.

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