Exhibit Updates

The popular, award-winning special exhibition Jellies: Living Art is closing on September 1. During its six-year run, the exhibition has dazzled millions of visitors with a unique blend of stunning jellies and the artwork they inspired. Don’t miss this last chance to immerse yourself in the world of jellies.

Stop by Jellies: Living Art, and you’ll find our new Exhibit of the Month, giant bell jellies. These unusual looking jellies have large transparent bells that can grow to nearly four inches long and reveal frilly insides. Giant bell jellies have hundreds of long, white tentacles, and smaller tentacles that are red at the base. The red area is where the eyespots, also known as ocelli, are!

Look closely and you’ll see a new sevengill shark cruising around our Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit. Big and beautiful, she’s the second-largest sevengill shark ever exhibited at the Aquarium, measuring 9-feet, 3-inches in length and weighing 237 pounds. The shark was collected in San Francisco Bay. Sevengill sharks, also called cowsharks, have been found in waters off the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Southern California, and in the Southern Hemisphere.

Lumpsuckers are tiny animals, often described as “ping-pong balls with fins.” A giant lumpsucker can be five inches long, but most are closer to one inch. They are slow, inefficient swimmers, but they’re very good at attaching themselves to solid objects like rocks or kelp, thanks to a suction cup-like disk on their bellies. Come see our quartet of these cool creatures in the Enchanted Kelp Forest gallery.

With their white bellies and dark backs, common murres look a lot like penguins. They swim like penguins too—“flying” under water with their short wings. But these amazing birds aren’t even related to penguins! They're pelagic seabirds that spend most of the year at sea. They live in the northern hemisphere, including the Monterey Bay. The next time you visit, be sure to check out the murres in their new Splash Zone home.

Welcome back blackfooted penguins and other favorite animals, such as cuttlefish, clownfish, seahorses and sea dragons. Discover a place where families can explore the ocean together.

For the third time, we’ve said farewell to a young white shark after it spent a few months with us on exhibit. The male shark was released in Monterey Bay on February 5, 162 days after he was placed in our Outer Bay exhibit. He’s carrying tracking tags that will report back with detailed information about his travels.

Makana, our beautiful Laysan albatross, is making appearances daily at 11:15. You'll have a chance to see this amazing bird up-close, ask questions and learn about the global threats albatross face from plastics pollution. The location of this presentation varies, so please check with Information Desk when you arrive.