The Museum of Coastal Carolina has several themed galleries with outstanding dioramas and exhibits about the natural history, environment, and culture of the Coastal Carolinas.
Ingram Lobby
- Portrait of Stuart and Louise Ingram, Museum/Planetarium founders
- 1865 map of Fort Caswell
- Civil War rifles, archaeology artifacts, and slide show
Changing Tides Gallery
- Carolina Gold exhibit
- Climate Action Heroes – Join Dora the Explorer, Spongbob Squarepants and others from Nickelodeon World at this National Children’s Museum exhibit
- Megabites exhibit — Features shark teeth found in North Carolina
- Shark jaw collection
- Wave machine that shows wave action during high and low tides
- Tide machine that demonstrates how the position of the sun, moon, and earth affects tides
- The Shore is Shifting — An interactive exhibit about inlet migration and hard structures on a barrier island system
- Augmented Reality Sandbox — An interactive exhibit to help understand water run off when it rains
- Hidden History – Part of a P-47D fighter plane tail wing found on Ocean Isle Beach
- Mastodon exhibit — includes a Mastodon tooth found on Ocean Isle Beach
Waterways Gallery
- Streams to the Sea exhibit — Explains how storm water runoff pollutes streams and rivers from higher ground as it flows to the Carolina coast
- Shipwrecks exhibit
- Aquarium with live sea animals
- Save the Ocean – an interactive exhibit that challenges you to stomp trash out of the ocean.
- North Carolina River Basins exhibit
- Diorama — Large habitat featuring animals and plants found in the Green Swamp of North Carolina
- Exhibit showing how to identify venomous and non-venomous snakes that live in North Carolina
- A Look Beneath the Surface – an easy-to-use telescope helps you investigate the sea.
Sea Shore Gallery
- Touch tank with live sea animals
- Lionfish exhibit
- Sargassum exhibit
- 225-gallon aquarium depicting a NC hard bottom reef
- Shell collection featuring over 200 different shells
- Fossil collection
- Display showing what minerals are found in one cubic yard of sea water
Ocean Reef Gallery
- Diorama — Walk through a reef that might exist 65 miles off the North Carolina coast
- See life-size models of whales, sharks, sea turtles, rays, etc.
Coastal Plain Gallery
- American Bald Eagle
- Shorebirds
- Animal pelts
- Dugout canoes
- Live non-venomous snakes
- Native American tools, weapons, and pottery
- Native Nature: In Your Backyard — Explore what you might find in a coastal plains backyard, including birds, bird nests, and John Reid’s excellent bird egg collection from the 1860’s. You’ll also find Ringo a cross-section of a giant live oak and Cardboard our box turtle.
Barrier Island Gallery
- Coastal Gallery — A changing exhibition of works by local artists
- Hand-built model of the old Ocean Isle Beach ferry
- Draw Alive! — An interactive exhibit where you can design/color your own sea creature and scan it into our virtual aquarium!
- The Legend of the Loggerhead exhibit — Model of a sand dune with a mother loggerhead turtle laying a nest and hatchlings emerging from a nest. Walk through the dune to view the nest from the interior.
- Watch a video filmed on Ocean Isle Beach about the life cycle of loggerhead turtles
- Shipwright’s tools and navigation equipment
- Wooden strip boat made in Brunswick County
- Model ships
