Alabama’s Aquarium at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab has opened its doors after a makeover that has brightened its look and freshened the way it presents nature, science and the pure fascination of exotic sea life brought close enough to touch.

The Aquarium, a significant educational and tourist attraction that has drawn more than 100,000 visitors a year, shut down in early May for the refresh. When it reopened at 10 a.m. Monday, a crowd of visitors flooded in to see the results. They weren’t all locals, either: Tags in the parking lot included Kentucky, Texas and other states.

Inside they found a freshened presentation of live sea creatures — including sea horses, a nurse shark, rays and much more – as well as updated, redesigned educational exhibits. A touch area where visitors could feel the skin of various preserved specimens as well as some live animals was one popular area; another was a tank that provided a close-up look at seahorses.

“It’s a significant change,” said Aquarium Educator Mendel Graeber. “And it was time.”

Sea Lab Executive Director John Valentine put it more bluntly. “It looked old and tired,” he said. “The message to everybody was that we looked old and tired.”

Valentine said the remodeling cost “several hundred thousand dollars” and had been in the works for at least three years. It didn’t add any new aquarium features to the facility, he said, but it did update old displays to represent current scientific understanding.

Valentine and Graeber said the updated exhibits emphasize two other important things. One is the connections between the unique features of the coast – the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, Mobile Bay, and barrier island ecologies, for example – and the watersheds that connect them to the rest of the state.

The other is the wealth of research going on at the Sea Lab. “There’s a lot of interest in our science, the research, and we wanted to infuse more of that throughout the building,” said Graeber.

One example: A display of juvenile Mississippi Diamondback Terrapins includes information on the work of Thane Wibbels, a Sea Lab-affiliated researcher at UAB. Under Wibbels’ care, the tortoises are incubated and hatched in a lab. They’re cared for until they’re too big to interest most of their natural predators, then tagged and returned to their habitat. Other exhibitions spotlight legendary naturalist E.O. Wilson, a Mobile native, and explain topics such as ocean currents and the life cycle of sea turtles.

At the ribbon-cutting that began the day, Valentine said the Sea Lab partners with 22 institutions of higher education in Alabama, and works with K-12 programs in all 67 counties. “We educate people from K through gray,” he said.

State Rep. Chip Brown, a key backer of the renovation, also encouraged people to think of the Sea Lab as a statewide asset. “This is a state facility,” he said. “It is a facility for all the people of Alabama to come down and enjoy what we have here.”

Valentine said recent marketing research has shown him that the target audience isn’t predominantly limited to the I-10 corridor, as Sea Lab officials used to think. “It’s the entire Midwest. It goes as far north as Minneapolis,” he said. “St. Louis, Dallas.”

Among those present for the opening was Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier.

“We’re proud to have the sea lab and the aquarium here on the island,” he said. “It’s always been a popular draw and I think folks are going to be real excited to get out and see all the new stuff that they now have.”

“It’s just going to help bring more folks to the island and give people who are here another thing to do during their stay,” Collier said. “It adds to the package, if you will. It adds to the collective package Dauphin Island has to offer.”

The Alabama Aquarium is at 102 Bienville Blvd. on Dauphin Island. For full information, including hours and ticket prices, visit www.disl.edu/aquarium.