Michelle Basch, wtop.com
SOLOMONS, Md. – If you live in the D.C. area, it’s time to meet your neighbors.
Creatures of the Chesapeake Bay — from the furry to the slippery — are waiting at a local museum you may never have visited — the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons.
“As a museum of regional history and natural history, we’re showing animals that are native to the bay or come into the bay and … we have a tank here with four cownose rays,” says Calvert Marine Museum Director Doug Alves.
Also on display are an unusual light-blue colored blue crab, and the infamous northern snakehead fish.
Tiny, quarter-inch long seahorses were just born at the museum and will likely go on display soon.
There also is a “touch tank” where visitors and their kids can reach in and feel a diamondback terrapin, a horseshoe crab and a skate, a fish closely related to a shark.
Two of the museum’s most popular residents are river otters named Bubbles and Squeak.
They have an outdoor habitat, but come inside around 4 p.m. everyday for a fish dinner.
There is an admission charge to get into the museum, but once a month the museum holds an event called “First Free Friday.”
“The first Friday of every month, from 5 to 8, instead of closing the doors at five o’clock, we stay open for free,” says Alves.
The museum is open daily during the summer.
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