I’d heard great things about Atlanta’s Georgia Aquarium. I recently visited the new, improved California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and was extremely impressed by that facility’s Steinhart Aquarium. I also can be totally captivated by a handful of neon tetras and zebra danios darting around a 20-gallon fish tank decorated with plastic plants and a castle perched on top of a rock, so there’s something particularly mesmerizing about viewing huge-by-comparison ocean dwellers in a reasonable approximation of their natural environment from mere feet away.

All I really need to tell you about this sprawling complex is that there are five main exhibit areas; just pick up the handy information sheet at the Guest Information desk (between the Ocean Voyager and Tropical Diver entrances). There were hordes of kids scurrying around and most of them were excitedly jabbering about the whale sharks, so the Ocean Voyager exhibit seemed like a logical first stop (after a trip to the restroom, of course).

Besides whale sharks, Ocean Voyager’s main draw is a walk-through tunnel protected by thick acrylic glass. You view fish swimming both above and around you; very cool. There’s also a huge window that offers an even more impressive floor-to-ceiling view. The animals here are endlessly watchable. Four whale sharks are the Georgia Aquarium’s rock stars (Trixie, the largest, measures about 22 feet in length). This tank’s other celebrity is Nandi, the only manta ray on display in a U.S. aquarium. Unlike other rays, the manta has a broad head flanked by two fleshy lobes that resemble horns (hence the common name devil ray). Silvery crevalle jacks swim in ghostly-looking schools, the giant grouper has lips that would put Mick Jagger’s to shame, and hammerhead and blacktip reef sharks move with an effortlessly languid grace that’s also quite intimidating.

My next stop was Tropical Diver. The living reef tank at this exhibit is not as large or as awe-inspiring as the one at the California Academy of Sciences, but it’s very impressive nonetheless. The usual assemblage of multicolored reef dwellers includes Bartlett’s anthias, a little gem of a sea bass in colors of neon pink, yellow and green. And don’t just bypass the small tanks along the way. Bizarre-looking cuttlefish (not a fish but a mollusk) bear a passing resemblance to Jar Jar Binks from the “Star Wars” prequels (and as one young wag put it, “they’re not cuddly”). My favorite was the Pacific sea nettle, a jellyfish found in abundant numbers off the California and Oregon coasts; dark orange in color and trailing wispy tentacles, they look positively ethereal.

Coldwater Quest has some interesting residents. The white, rubbery-looking beluga whales have perpetual smiles, like dolphins. You can’t help but smile back. The Giant Japanese spider crab, on the other hand, looks like something out of a nightmare. It’s big, it lives in cold, dark depths on the bottom of the ocean floor, it moves slowly and it’s ugly but fascinating. Another strange creature, and one that I had never heard of, is the weedy sea dragon (with the hard-to-pronounce scientific name Phyllopteryx taeniolatus). A relative of the sea horse, it looks almost insectile floating among waving leaves of kelp.

River Scout has a couple of habitats above floor level, so you get a worm’s-eye view of catfish and other freshwater denizens through glass. The red piranhas were fascinating. B-movies have given these fish a bad rep, and they do feed communally, collectively stimulated to a frenzied attack by the presence of blood in the water. But floating almost motionless in their tank, a group of them looked benign enough. (It helps that you don’t see the teeth.) They’re also bigger than I imagined a piranha would be.

And aren’t otters fun to watch? They just seem like they’re happy. The Asian small-clawed otter spends more time on land than any other type of otter, and these little guys were scampering all over the place, only pausing long enough to stare back at the humans watching and pointing at them.

Around this time my schedule got in the way and I didn’t have a chance to stop by the Georgia Explorer exhibit and its interactive horseshoe crab, sea star, stingray and shrimp touch pools. I’ll hit that next time, since this is one attraction I plan on seeing again.