Young boys, it seems, are hardwired for danger. The animated movie Finding Nemo features plenty of cuddly turtles and starfish, but the character most boys adore is Bruce, the great white shark who spends the film trying to overcome his appetite for fish like little Nemo. Which is why there was no holding back my six-year-old son, Max, when he heard that there was a place in Boothbay Harbor where you could actually pet a shark. Here, within a cluster of green-roofed buildings down a winding road lined with million-dollar oceanfront homes, danger leaps right out of the water.
Granted, the action takes place within a twenty-foot-wide fiberglass swimming pool and under the watchful eyes of the Maine State Aquarium’s eight staff members and two-dozen docents and volunteers. And the sharks are actually ten-pound spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias), but their cartilaginous skeleton and two rows of teeth make them every bit the shark that Bruce is. Caught off Cape Cod and trucked to the aquarium every June, a half-dozen of the sharks spend the rest of their lives swimming in circles, lured to the surface by electroreceptors in their snouts that are attracted to the natural electricity humans emit. Reaching two fingers into the water to stroke their soft, somewhat silky backs as they swim past completes a satisfying electrical connection for them — reiki for sharks. The experience is so enticing that some sharks will thrust nearly a third of their bodies out of the water in their attempts to reach children’s hands.
For most of the thirty thousand people who visit the aquarium each summer the sharks are the star attraction, but behind the Plexiglass exhibits that surround the tank lurks wildlife that is every bit as interesting. From a lumpfish muckled onto a piling while aerating his mate’s eggs for seventy days, to the hairy oyster toadfish and
colorful mummichog, each of the exhibits provides a glimpse into the populations that live beneath the surface of the Gulf of Maine. “We show people that the region itself is very diverse,” explains Aimee Hayden-Roderiques, the natural science educator at the aquarium. “It’s all stuff that if you were out diving you would be able to see readily.” Each of the exhibits includes a short factoid that appeals directly to younger minds — Who knew that an oyster toadfish was taken into space to study microgravity and equilibrium? — as well as the more scientific facts found at larger museums.

But the octagonal building, with its exposed ceiling, central skylight, and twenty-foot-long touch tank, creates a more intimate experience than you’ll find at the New England Aquarium in Boston. “Even at big aquariums you can’t interact the way you can here,” Hayden-Roderiques remarks, adding that on those rare mornings when the aquarium is filled to its hundred-person capacity, it still doesn’t feel cramped. “It’s small enough that we don’t have large crowds. You can learn a lot without being overwhelmed.”
For boys like Max, though, it all comes down to petting sharks. As one spy-hops only inches from his face, another rolls his dorsal fin as Max strokes its slippery skin. “Now that,” he declares, “was soooo cool.”

IF YOU GO
The Maine State Aquarium, 194 McKown Point Rd., in Boothbay Harbor is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week from May 23 through Labor Day. Labor Day through September 20 it is open Wednesdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children and seniors, free for under five. 207-633-9674. http://maine.gov/dmr/rm/aquarium/index.html