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The aquarium exhibits look like a working marine laboratory with exposed seawater pipes and valves. Many of the tanks are laboratory-like, not habitat tanks. Scientists like to keep their animals visible so they can focus on a certain characteristic. Visit the seawater table and hold an assortment of sea creatures in your hand-you can touch sea stars, sea urchins, hermit crabs, sea anemones, and different kelp. In the "What's in the bay today?" tank
you will see animals found in Monterey Bay
seasonally or rarely seen in an aquarium. See up-close each animal's specialized characteristics in the aquarium tanks. Sanddabs use camouflage, thornback rays have short spines for defense, pacific sardines swim together as a group for defense, and spot prawns' bright red color actually camouflages them in the deep waters of the Monterey Bay. Come to the Seymour Center and ask some questions. Are anemones plants or animals? What are those strange looking leathery pods that washed up on the beach? How fast do sea stars with up to 24 arms move? Why do these funny little crabs decorate themselves with found objects? Find out at the Seymour Center! See what's new in the aquarium:Ultrasonic Fish: Territorial male kelp greenlings often chase away other male greenlings, but exactly how far an individual roams is a question UC graduate student Jan Freiwald hopes to answer. By surgically implanting small one-inch-long acoustic transmitters in his fish, Freiwald is able to remotely track 50 kelp greenlings as they fin over a shallow reef off Lover’s Point in nearby Pacific Grove. “Each acoustic transmitter emits a unique short-range ultrasonic signal identifying the fish ccarrying the transmitter,” explains Freiwald. Three signal receivers anchored in his study site “listen” for these signals as they repeat every five minutes and transmit any information received to a computer onshore. A process called triangulation uses slight differences between the arrival time of an ultrasonic signal, as recorded by each receiver, to calculate the exact location of Freiwald’s greenlings on the reef. “I didn’t expect they would have such small little areas for years” Freiwald says about his fish. Preliminary findings suggest both adult and young fish of both sexes stay within an area of only several hundred square meters (about the size of a little league baseball diamond) for years! Ever curious, Freiwald is taking his research further, temporarily
removing some these fish from his study site to determine if
the ranges of the remaining kelp greenlings is affected by the
overall reduction of this species in an area. In the meantime,
one of Freiwald’s kelp greenlings has been given a temporary
home in our Rocky Reef exhibit for you to see.
Additional aquarium news items in the Aquarium News Archive
About the Center: History | Exhibits | Aquarium | Blue Whale Skeleton | Outdoor Areas | Facilities |
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Animals
featured in the Seymour Center aquarium are chosen because
they elicit questions a scientist might ask. Each of the
animals has eye-catching characteristics-fast movement,
bright color, bizarre look-that inspires the scientist in
all of us. Scientists look at these strange phenomena and
ask the same questions we might. Then they get busy
answering the question.
This
tank houses squid eggs, juvenile rockfish,
sea hares, basket stars, or other remarkable animals.
