Oceans

Exhibitions

Anglerfish

New Discoveries

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Events

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Mon

10

Jul

a shark jaw is held by a child facing away from teh camera

Adventures in Nature Day Camp: Ocean Explorers

Day Camps Youth

12 am

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Mon

31

Jul

boy in green shirt writes in a notebook standing between shelves with jars on them

Adventures in Nature Day Camp: Lab-ology

Day Camps Youth

12 am

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Stories

Wonder Girls

A contingent of 8 to 18-year-olds spent three inspirational days at NHM learning from experts about fossils, mammals, and oceans, and discovering the many stepping stones to careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

Depth Perceptions

NHM’s marine collections illuminate the shape of life in deep water.

A Giant Fish Story

An extremely rare adult giant sea bass specimen makes its way to NHM

Think Small With SEM

Seeing the big picture with tiny specimens and one powerful scanning electron microscope

Anacapa Island Channel Islands landscape

Off to Anacapa!

Our Anthropology Curator heads to the Channel Islands on an unprecedented underwater archaeology expedition to find evidence of the first people to set foot on these shores

Year of the Tiger

Celebrate the 2022 Lunar New Year with highlights from the collection

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Girls in Stem text with a variety of icons in purple, yellow, and pink

Girls in STEM Days

Join us this spring, for Girls in STEM Days at the Natural History Museum! Girls in STEM Days are an opportunity for girls ages 8-18 to participate in hands-on STEM activities, meet real scientists, and explore future career paths in a fun and engaging way.

Marine Biodiversity Center

Most species on Earth are animals, and most animals are invertebrates, so most of the Earth’s astonishing biodiversity is in the invertebrate animals. The Marine Biodiversity Center is the museum’s core facility for the curation of these remarkable animals. Collections come to the museum from a variety of research projects and government agencies.

abalone cove beach southern california daytime

DISCO

An ongoing program at the Natural History Museum aims to develop research and monitoring tools to enormously accelerate our ability to discover and investigate marine invertebrate biodiversity of California’s nearshore waters.

Past Projects

While NHM is not currently working on these projects, they have influenced our current community science projects.

Close up of Polychaetes, black background

Life in the Ocean

Our researchers are devoted to better understanding our coastal communities — both now and in the past — and the thousands of animals that live (or lived) there.