The exhibit, featuring a preserved short-crested oarfish found locally in 2024, is on display through summer and included with general admission.
Birch Aquarium at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography has opened “Oarfish: Recent Discoveries from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Collection,” a new, limited-time immersive exhibition that invites guests to learn more about these legendary deep-sea animals.
The exhibition features a rare, preserved short-crested oarfish specimen discovered on Grandview Beach near Leucadia last November, a few months after another oarfish was found in La Jolla.
Oarfish are exceptionally rare deep-sea fish; a California sighting is even rarer, with only about 21 sightings statewide since 1901.
The new Birch Aquarium exhibit brings together the folk history of the short-crested oarfish, often shown as messengers of disease and natural disasters, with the Marine Vertebrate Collection at Scripps, which is home to one of the largest collections of deep-sea fish in the world.
Guests are invited to observe these rare fish up close, in the setting of an “underwater palace.”
“Oarfish: Recent Discoveries from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Collection” will be included with general admission and will remain on view through the summer.
Visit aquarium.ucsd.edu for more information.
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