UShaka Marine World, Theme park and aquarium at Golden Mile, Durban, South Africa.

uShaka Marine World is a theme park and aquarium at Golden Mile in Durban, South Africa, combining different family attractions across 16 hectares. The facility includes a marine aquarium with sharks and rays, a water park with slides and wave pools, and an enclosure for reptiles and amphibians.

The complex opened in April 2004 after a three-year construction period and brought a large leisure facility of this kind to Durban for the first time. Specialists awarded the thematic design with an international prize already in the opening year.

The aquarium entrance is built as a shipwreck, with tanks, restaurants and cafés inside the hull; The Cargo Hold restaurant has an entire wall of shark-filled aquarium. Village Walk is laid out as an African-themed village of restaurants, cafés and shops. Sea World displays species from seahorses to sharks and dolphins in 32 tanks holding 17,500 cubic metres of water.

The park sits on a strip of land between the harbour and the beach, with uShaka Beach reached directly from inside and a long pier running out into the ocean. Sea World, Wet 'n Wild, Village Walk, Dangerous Creatures and Rayz Kids World are separate sections, so allow time to move between them. The dolphin stadium seats 1,200 and the seal shows 350 spectators.

The aquarium holds several tunnels made of clear acrylic that run beneath the tanks and allow a view from below of the fish. At some points sharks swim just a few centimeters above the heads of visitors.