Maritime Gloucester Competitors

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Mystic Aquarium is a division of Sea Research Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, and is counted among the nation’s leading aquariums with more than 300 species and an extensive collection of marine mammals, including New England’s only beluga whales. Mystic Aquarium has been a pioneer in offering guests a variety of up close encounters with a wide range of marine animals. The mission of Mystic Aquarium is to inspire people to care for and protect our ocean environment through conservation, education and research.

Mystic Seaport Museum is the nation’s largest maritime museum. Founded in 1929 to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past, the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education with the mission to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience. The Museum’s grounds cover 19 acres on the Mystic River in Mystic, CT and include a recreated 19th century coastal village, a working shipyard, exhibit halls, and state-of-the-art artifact storage facilities. The Museum is home to more than 500 historic watercraft, including four National Historic Landmark vessels, most notably the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, America’s oldest commercial ship still in existence. With a full-time staff of 150 that swells to 350 during the summer season, the Museum hosts over 250,000 visitors annually. Mystic Seaport employs a diverse staff of scholars, librarians, historic interpreters, educators, scientists, musicians, and skilled artisans. A stroll through the historic village transports visitors back to the mid-1800s where they can experience firsthand from staff historians, storytellers, musicians, and craftspeople just what life was like to earn one's living from the sea. In the Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard, they can watch shipwrights keeping the skills and techniques of traditional shipbuilding alive as they restore and maintain the Museum’s watercraft collection. The Museum’s 41,000 sq. ft. Collections Research Center (CRC) offers access to more than 2 million artifacts and is also home to the G.W. Blunt White Library, a 75,000-volume research library where scholars from around the world come to study America’s maritime history. For more than 80 years, visitors, students, and scholars have turned to Mystic Seaport to preserve and interpret America’s maritime experience. The Museum’s commitment to that mission is as strong as ever.