We’re thrilled to celebrate the opening of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s groundbreaking new exhibition, Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean, this month! This exciting new exhibition from our education and conservation partner has been more than five years in the making. 

The exhibition is the latest in our long history of collaboration with the Aquarium. We’re privileged to have a world-class aquarium as a partner for sharing MBARI’s work with the world. Critical to that effort are Aquarium volunteers, whose passion for the ocean helps inspire future ocean stewards. To honor the millions of hours that volunteers have contributed to the Aquarium’s mission of inspiring conservation of the ocean, MBARI researchers named a newly discovered species of deep-sea crown jelly after Jeff Reynolds, the Aquarium’s first volunteer.

If you’re able to visit the Aquarium this summer, be sure to say hello to volunteers and thank them for their service. They’ll be eager to share their favorite anecdotes from life in the ocean’s mysterious depths and introduce you to animals like the bloody-belly comb jelly and giant deep-sea isopod. If you can’t make it to Monterey to see Into the Deep in person, be sure to check out the virtual exhibition and read about MBARI’s contributions behind the scenes.

Dive in with us,

We’ve been working with our colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to help them bring the deep sea to land. When you visit, you’ll encounter some of the most unique and rarely seen animals ever featured in an aquarium exhibition. You've seen MBARI's top 10 deep-sea animals, but we wondered, what are Monterey Bay Aquarium's favorites? So here they are, the Aquarium’s top 10 favorite deep-sea animals—at least for this video! Dive in.

The sediment that pours out of coastal rivers accumulates at the head of Monterey Canyon. Periodically, it collapses and forms a sediment gravity flow that surges through the submarine canyon like an underwater landslide. Because these flows move quickly and powerfully along the seafloor, they are challenging for scientists to study. Motion-sensing “smart boulders” developed by MBARI engineers have provided the first detailed look inside sediment gravity flows. Read more.

The deep-sea crown jelly Atolla is one of the most common residents of the ocean’s midnight zone. Its bell has a signature scarlet color and bears one tentacle much longer than the rest. When MBARI researchers spotted a jelly that looked like Atolla, but lacked the telltale trailing tentacle, their curiosity was piqued. MBARI researchers have now published the scientific description of a large new species of Atolla in the scientific journal Animals. They have named their discovery Atolla reynoldsi in honor of the first volunteer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, MBARI’s education and conservation partner. Read more.