Monterey Bay Aquarium to unveil new ‘Into the Deep’ exhibition

A dark, frigid world that is low in oxygen and high in acidity sounds like a hostile habitat to most. But these features are required for the strange yet beautiful animals living in the deepest, darkest corners of the ocean.

After more than five years of work, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has reconstructed this unique environment for deep-sea creatures like glowing jellies, giant isopods and fish with light-producing organs to call home. The newest exhibition, “Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean,” cost $15 million to develop and relied on a collaboration with experts at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. It opens to the public on April 9.

“The deep sea is one of the least explored places on Earth,” said Beth Redmond-Jones, vice president of exhibitions of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “It’s just an amazing and beautiful and mysterious place that we don’t know much about. … We thought it was really critical to share the beauty and the aspects of the deep that are really amazing.”

The aquarium has wanted to showcase the lifeforms thriving thousands of feet below sea level for years. It first accomplished this goal about a decade ago with a small, temporary exhibition called “Mysteries of the Deep.”

“We always knew that we wanted to do a bigger exhibition,” Redmond-Jones explained. “But there are a lot of things that had to be considered on the animal care side of things.”

The water is a different world at these depths — it is freezing in temperature, high in acidity, low in oxygen and puts enormous physical pressure on animals. For “Into the Deep,” aquarium staff only selected creatures that can survive at surface-level pressure. But the aquarium’s applied water science team spent six years researching and developing methods to match the three other deep-sea factors, according to Kasie Regnier, director of applied water science of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Adjusting the seawater temperature is easy — the water is cooled with chillers. Increasing acidity is fairly simple as well. The team adds carbon dioxide to the water, which ultimately releases hydrogen, making it acidic. Regnier says this practice is common in the aquarium industry.

Lowering oxygen levels, however, is an infinitely trickier task.

In the past, scientists bubbled nitrogen into the water to push oxygen out. But doing so saturates the water with too much gas, according to Regnier, which can harm jellies and other animals the aquarium wanted to display.

Instead, Regnier and her team turned to a technique traditionally used in breweries to push gases in or out of liquids.

“Basically, there are these tubes with thousands of teeny tiny straws inside that are arranged in parallel,” she explained. The straws are made of “very, very thin membranes that allow gas to get through them but not water.”

The applied water science team pumps seawater through the tubes but outside the straws. At the same time, the staff members pump nitrogen inside the straws while also applying a vacuum, which pulls oxygen and other gases out of the passing seawater.

The aquarium proudly boasts this as the most sophisticated water treatment system the institution has ever designed.

Most of the animals in the new exhibition were plucked right from the underwater Monterey Canyon, which has a maximum depth of about 4,900 feet. The aquarium’s animal care staff collaborated with the MBARI scientists to collect the deep-sea creatures.

MBARI’s two remotely operated vehicles have mechanical arms that can carefully retrieve animals from the ocean. After capturing one, the ROV pilot slowly brings the creature up to the surface and places it in a special holding tank on one of MBARI’s three research ships. When it docks, the animal is transferred to another tank at MBARI’s facilities or the aquarium.

MBARI researchers have also reviewed the scientific content, rockwork and animal models featured in the new exhibition.

“It’s definitely taking the MBARI and MBA village to make this happen,” Redmond-Jones said.

When visiting the new 10,000-square-foot exhibition, guests can see — and touch, in some cases — these curious deep-sea creatures, which include bloody-belly comb jellies, anglerfish, sea angels, giant spider crabs and more.

Guests can also learn about MBARI’s ongoing research projects through videos and information panels, immerse themselves in a round room with a projected video of animals swimming around and explore the Monterey Canyon with a topographic map.

The largest and most intricate exhibit is a model of a juvenile sperm whale carcass on the ocean floor. Known as a whale fall, this habitat provides a rich source of food and draws in a community of other sea animals.

Overall, the Monterey Bay Aquarium staff hopes that guests leave the exhibition feeling awed and inspired by the mysterious, unexplored regions below the ocean’s surface.

“We just want them to really have some connection to the deep sea and understand that we really need to protect this place,” said Redmond-Jones. “There are some amazing creatures there, and we don’t even know what all is there.”