Duluth aquarium celebrates 13th birthdays of beloved otters Agate and Ore

Agate and Ore turned 13 this year, an age that puts the Great Lakes Aquarium’s best-known river otters well beyond the average wild lifespan and keeps them among Duluth’s most familiar animal attractions on the St. Louis County waterfront.

The aquarium marked the milestone with a birthday celebration on Saturday, April 11, 2026, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Children made birthday cards for the otters while staff prepared a special cake made with several kinds of seafood. The celebration also included otter-themed crafts, special programming and appearances by Splish and Splash, the aquarium’s otter mascots. Normal admission rates applied, while members were admitted free.

The birthday event carried a practical message for the aquarium as much as a playful one. North American river otters in the wild usually live about 10 years, and Agate and Ore reaching 13 underscores the kind of care, enrichment and habitat management that keep them healthy. Natalie Riemer, the aquarium’s curator of terrestrial animals, said the otters remain active and are still fun to work with, and that staff enjoys creating new ways for them to learn, explore and play.

The aquarium says Agate and Ore are free to decide when they want to be visible to visitors, because North American river otters sleep 12 to 16 hours a day. Visitors are most likely to catch them around 11 a.m. or 3 p.m., often when the animals are swimming, belly flopping or hunting and eating afternoon snacks. Those behaviors are not just entertaining displays. The aquarium says they help sharpen reflexes and improve hunting abilities.

Agate and Ore live in Otter Cove, an exhibit modeled after the real-life Otter Cove on the eastern shore of Lake Superior in Canada’s Pukaskwa Provincial Park. The setting ties the pair to the region’s larger Lake Superior identity, giving families and visitors a recognizable stop that connects local tourism with the wildlife of the North Shore and beyond.

The birthdays have become an annual spring tradition at the aquarium, and the pair’s age has made them a recurring draw for years. They were 12 in 2025, 11 in 2024 and 9 in 2022, when they marked their golden birthday. The aquarium has also said the otters were wild animals for the first six months of their lives, a detail that shaped how training is done and added to the significance of the free-contact work staff carries out with them.