AQUARIUM POISED TO OPEN NEW EXHIBIT
MONTEREY >> For nearly four decades, the allure of exhibit regulars such as jovial sea otters, endearing African penguins and balletic stingrays have drawn visitors to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But starting Saturday, the rich hub of marine life is inviting crowds deeper as a new exhibition pulls attention to rarely seen wonders tucked away layers into the ocean.
Inventively ethereal in scientific design as much as its display, the $15 million attraction called “Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean” will feature some of the planet's most extraordinarily bizarre creatures, many found in local seawater too far below the surface to catch with prying eyes. Until now.
“A lot of people have this perception of the deep as something that is scary with alien life, but as they'll see with the exhibition, the animals are just exquisite,” said Beth Redmond-Jones, vice president of exhibitions at
the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “They're fluid and they're elegant and there's just this awe about them. … We really hope visitors walk away with an understanding that the deep sea is a really mysterious place, but we need to protect it because we do know so little.”
Sweeping away the deep sea curtain
Though the largest ecosystem on Earth, the deep sea — a layer of ocean beginning just 660 feet down — is vastly unexplored, Redmond-Jones explained. “We want to show that while it's all one ocean, the deep is all around … it just gets deeper,” she said, a point the aquarium sought to convey through the layout of “Into the Deep.”
As guests walk the exhibition, they are sequentially moved further into the water column, first passing a lower section of the Aquarium's Open Sea tank — still signifying the ocean's “sunlit zone” — before even lowerlying animals are introduced. Mid water creatures are next,
followed by life found on and near the seafloor. By the exhibition's end, visitors feel submerged in an environment similar to the Monterey Canyon, the underwater chasm spanning Monterey Bay that a majority of the Aquarium's new deep sea residents used to call home. Some other species included in
the show are imported from Japan.
For years, these creatures and remote habitats in the wild have only been privy to scientists and researchers, like those housed at the Moss Landing-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. In collaboration with
the local experts, however, exposure of animals rarely, if ever, before seen in captivity became possible in Monterey.
“Our relationship with MBARI and the tools they have is what allowed us to go down, look for deep sea animals and bring them back to the surface,” said Kyle Harrigan, water systems design engineer for the Aquarium.
Already equipped for trips into the deep, MBARI uses its research vessels and remotely operated vehicles to carefully pluck creatures from Monterey Canyon for the Aquarium's show. As dynamic as MBARI's discoveries themselves, the exhibition will have around 50 different species on display at any given time but change as researchers bring new animals in.
To accommodate the evolving show in a fashion sustainable for these creatures, a critical life support system specially developed for the exhibition ensures tank conditions are responsive to and reflective of animals' preferred environments, Harrigan explained.
At deep sea depths, the comfortable habitat is a different kind of harsh reality. Recreating that home away from home at the aquarium is a matter of cooling filtered seawater from Monterey Bay to 39 degrees Fahrenheit, while its chemistry is made more acidic with carbon dioxide. And to mirror the deep's extremely low oxygen levels that are just a fraction of those possible at the surface, a complex system of tubes, membranes and vacuums operating behind the scenes essentially pulls oxygen out of collected water.
The product is an exhibition as practical as it is experiential — and unique.
“This life support system, being in Monterey Bay and us having MBARI — those three things coming together make it so this couldn't be done anywhere else,” said Redmond-Jones. “I had someone ask me the other day if we could just replicate this in Los Angeles for example, and I said no. It's such a requirement that the exhibit be here in Monterey.”
Deep sea performers
Mystically whimsical, the locally-housed troupe of deep sea performers demand attention on dry land: Doe-eyed elephant fish with snouts fit to find prey. Innocently lethal snails the size of fingernails.
Shimmering red jellyfish adaptively trained to disappear.
“For some of these animals, we're the only people in the world physically looking at them,” said Tommy Knowles, senior aquarist and member of the exhibition's animal care team. “That's a really cool experience to give to people. To know no one else is even looking at them right now.”
That's true of the bloodbelly comb jelly, a ruby colored creature first described by MBARI scientists 20 years ago but since studied thoroughly to extend the species' captive longevity. Across the hall, history repeats itself with a display of what MBARI has dubbed the Red X jelly, an animal found so recently in Monterey Bay it has yet to be named.
The exhibition offers a similarly detailed view of not just singular species through small windows but entire deep sea habitats. A tank of non-photosynthetic coral, for example, that took aquarium staff more than three years to prepare for and put together, now provides a colorful snapshot of how these creatures survive without sunlight.
And just down the hall, the show's largest exhibit lays out a phenomenon known as a whale fall, when a dead whale sinks to the seafloor and offers food-limited creatures of the deep sea an opportunity to feast. At the aquarium, the environment is
represented using a model of a juvenile sperm whale carcass, around which a host of animals — like giant Japanese spider crabs whose legs span 10 feet across — conglomerate as a fleeting community.
“This is an ecosystem that comes and goes,” said Megan Olhasso, curator of fish and invertebrates for the aquarium. “It's natural, but it's not always there, and it goes through different stages. … A whale fall is just more evolving than some of our other, more stable ecosystems, and that's what made (the exhibit) so fun — to peel back all the different levels to it.”
Between the exhibits, captivation is not lost as the show cushions live displays with 4K imagery on sweeping television screens, videos projections bringing life to dark walls, and 3D dioramas of field-accurate technology.
And most immersive of all is the exhibition's bioluminescence experience, a hypnotic program capturing real midwater jellies as they produce their own living light.
“Every day I walk through here and I think, `Wow, we really did this,'” said Redmond-Jones. “I mean, look at how fragile and just,” she trailed off, turning her attention to the exhibition. “It's just stunning.”
Mysteriously vital
By experiencing the undersea marvels firsthand, Redmond-Jones hopes visitors internalize the exhibition as much as a lesson
in conservation as an enthralling attraction.
Because deep sea life disappears below layers of ocean, Redmond-Jones explained people often don't consider the impact of human harm on the remote creatures. But even far below the surface, she continued, pollutants like microplastics can find their way into deep sea diets, threatening far-reaching consequences scientists are still trying to understand.
“When you think about the ocean, it's facing a rising tide of threats — overfishing, plastic pollution, climate change, habitat destruction — and those threats also affect the deep sea,” said Raúl Nava, science communication and media relations specialist for MBARI. “It's incredibly urgent that we understand those threats and understand their impact on this environment that's massive but poorly explored. We need to learn about it before it's too late.”
Nava directed his call to action not just to ocean experts alone but to anyone willing and curious enough to help. Emphasizing his point, Nava nodded to the exhibition's final
section: a wall flashing questions MBARI has yet to answer but rather posed as inspiration to departing guests.
“Join us and explore
the ocean,” he urged. “We need (everyone's) help to really understand and ultimately protect what's such an important treasure for our planet.”