Oceans

Exhibitions

Anglerfish

New Discoveries

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Stories

A paleoart rendition of Eupachydiscus sp. by Cullen Townsend.

Collections Staff Help Ammonites Come Out of Their Shells

Uncovering how digitization and collections management made a groundbreaking extinction study come to life

Adam Wall in the Age of Mammals for Science of SpongeBob

Science of SpongeBob: Ask the Experts!

Celebrate 25 years of SpongeBob with some sea-worthy science!

Tropical reef with fish swimming around it

Science of SpongeBob: Marine Protected Areas

How can we preserve Bikini Bottoms around the world?

Science of SpongeBob: Super Slugs and Snails

Discover the slimy secrets of undersea snails and slugs!

A Deep Dive on Microplastics

Museum scientists are examining fish guts to understand the pervasiveness and types of plastics invading California waters over time, which may help us understand how that pollution affects sea creatures and even land-loving pescatarians.

Dispatches from the D-ARK

Follow Curator of Malacology Jann Vendetti with updates from an expedition into the deep sea caves around Japan's Minami-Daitō Island

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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.