The Aquarium is always updating and enriching our exhibit spaces. It's exciting to put a new sea jelly on exhibit, or include new information about marine animals in a colorful display.

This is why we're thrilled to tell you about our newest touch-station called Voices in the Sea! You can watch the videos from this exhibit here.

You'll find these new panels and touch screen on the second level of the Aquarium, right across from the Schooling Exhibit. Just pause for a moment to check out the new panels on the wall. You'll learn some interesting tidbits about how marine animals—from singing humpback whale to whistling dolphins—communicate underwater. There's also information about Aquarium research on right whale stress from underwater noise pollution.




Now for the really fun stuff! Do you think you have what it takes to "whoop" it up like a marine animal? A wide touch screen lets you navigate to your favorite cetacean (whales and dolphins) and listen to their distinct calls. Then just tap the screen to record your own call and see how they compare! It's harder than you think.



We are grateful to the Pacific Life Foundation for making this exhibit possible. It was developed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography with the Aquarium of the Pacific and even includes some of the Aquarium's very own right whale researchers!

Come check out our newest activity and learn about marine animal communication.

One of the oldest groups of animals alive today, jellies often appear elegantly simple to the casual observer. But spend a little time with one of our jelly lab aquarists and you get the impression that, when it comes to jellies, there is a lot more to them than many people suspect.

Here at the New England Aquarium, we frequently have a dozen or more species of jellies (like the moon jelly). Some are on exhibit for visitors to see while others are raised behind the scenes to be sent to other aquariums all over the world.

 
Younger lagoon jellies (Mastigias papua) contain photosynthetic algae. As they mature, they need less light and loose their bluish color.

In order to successfully raise jellies, our aquarists must be familiar with their unusual reproduction strategy. Like something out of a science-fiction film, jellies go through several life stages that are drastically different from one another. Adult jellies, called medusa, can reproduce sexually by releasing eggs and sperm. Fertilized eggs become free-swimming planula larvae.




The lifecycle of a local species, the moon jelly, is so complicated that it helps to have an illustration courtesy of Senior Aquarium Educator Lisbeth Bornhofft.

Jellies can also reproduce asexually by forming anemone-like polyps (jellies and sea anemones, along with corals, are related to each other) that strobilate, or bud off, identical copies of themselves. These free-swimming “buds” are called ephyra. In some species, several ephyra can bud off of one single polyp.Since the jelly lifecycle in the wild is seasonal, our aquarists recreate a temperature shift from winter to spring, or spring to summer, to cause the polyps to strobilate.

Thumbnail-sized ephyra of purple-striped jellies (Chrysaora colorata)

Some ephyra are photosynthetic; they have symbiotic algae called zooxanthaellae that converts sunlight into food. Other ephyra are quite content to munch on tiny brine shrimp. Feeding and growing, they will eventually “bell over” into an adult medusa. This is when the shape of the jelly changes from a pointy star to more of a solid dome.


Despite their small size, these ephyra are already predators. If you look closely, you can see the brine shrimp we raise and feed to our jellies.

Here at the Aquarium, we have jellies on exhibit in both the Thinking Gallery and in the West Wing. While most of the jelly raising happens behind the scenes, we currently have Cassiopia jellies reproducing in the live mangrove exhibit. These jellies are often referred to as “upside-down” jellies since as adults they settle to the bottom of shallow, sunny tropical waters and use their bell like a suction cup. Being upside-down allows the photosynthetic algae to get plenty of sun!


Below is a video of both adult and ephyra stages of Cassiopia on exhibit. Or better yet, come to the New England Aquarium and see them for yourself!

-Dave

Jellies are found in a number of areas around the Aquarium. You can find them on both floors of the West Wing (the same area where you can find our new Trust Family Foundation Shark and Ray Touch Tank), in a number of behind-the-scenes areas and also on the second floor in the Thinking Gallery. While the species on display are known to change, we currently have a beautiful species known as flower hat jellies (Olindias formosa).



These intricate animals are found naturally off the coast of Southern Japan, Brazil and Argentina. They are thought to be quite rare, but their conservation status is not currently known. While they don’t move around that often, they certainly can. Like all true jellies, or cnidarians, they have stinging cells called nematocysts. A flower hat jellies’ sting is painful, but is usually non-lethal to humans. You can read more about jellies on a previous post.



Flower hat jellyfishes, photo courtesy Fred Hsu via Wikimedia Commons

These jellies eat mainly small fish and crustaceans. Here at the Aquarium they are fed live zebrafish. There is no set feeding schedule, so getting to see them fed is just luck of the draw (as a hint, they are at varying times on Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday). It’s a pretty interesting feed. Check out the video below to see how it works!




See you in the galleries!

-Sam

Since so much of life on Earth emerged and diversified in the ocean, walking around the Aquarium can be a bit like walking back through time. This is especially true in the Ancient Fishes exhibit in the Aquarium’s Thinking Gallery.







(Australian lungfish photo by Tannin)


Is that a giant salamander? Actually it’s a Australian lungfish. Though this Australian lungfish has a single lung, it mostly uses its gills to breathe.

The African lungfish, however, has two lungs and can actually drown if held underwater. During the dry season, this species can burrow into mud and spend several years in a dormant state called estivation. [Note: In 2009, Aquarium trainers worked on training an African lungfish to swim through a tube to get food. Photos and video from those efforts are in this post, scroll down.]








In fact, all vertebrates—including reptiles, birds and mammals—evolved from ancestral, air-breathing fishes.

And just to set the record straight, just because a fish species is considered "ancient" does not mean that it is primitive. So-called "ancient" fishes are themselves the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and are very well-adapted to the habitats in which they live.

-Dave

See the seadragons! Buy tickets online—no ticketing service charge.

While they may not be the fire-breathing animals of myth, the seadragons at the Aquarium (found in the Thinking Gallery on the second floor) are pretty remarkable. We are lucky enough to have two species of seadragon—leafy and weedy.

 
 The weedy sea dragon (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus) has smaller appendages but more varied color.

The leafy seadragon (Phycodurus eques) is the species with the more ornate, leaf-like appendages.

These animals are what are known as endemic. Endemic means they are found in only one location on the planet; in the case of seadragons, they are found only in southern Australia. Until very recently, scientists thought these were the only two species of seadragon. But in early 2015 researchers report having identified a third species of seadragon—the ruby seadragon!

In 2009, New England Aquarium Senior Aquarist Jeremy Brodt, went on expedition to this seadragon habitat. You can read his final blog post from that expedition here, and check out this video he took of a leafy seadragon male in the wild. If you look closely you can see he has eggs on his tail!



These fish are obviously designed for camouflage. In fact, the fins that they use for propulsion are almost entirely transparent, so even when they are swimming they just appear to be floating—and this helps them to look even more like just another piece of seaweed.


While these adaptations help sea dragons to avoid predators, their excellent camouflage also makes it very hard for scientists to get a good population count in the wild. However, even though their numbers are unknown, they are cherished animals in Australia and are protected due to their small geographic range.



So next time you’re at the Aquarium, make sure you stop by and check out these charismatic fish.

-Sam

Visitors who've wandered through the Aquarium's Thinking Gallery likely saw these giant residents: goliath groupers. This video shows you just how big they are. See if you can spot some other "helpful" fish in the exhibit, too!

(There are groupers in the Giant Ocean Tank, too! Listen to grouper grunts on this GOT Divers Blog entry. You might also like to see neat video of what Mero, the GOT's Warsaw grouper, does during a gravel bath!)



Those small fish in the video are gobies and they have a mutualistic relationship with the groupers, meaning both the gobies and the groupers benefit. The gobies, sometimes called cleaner fish, benefit by getting an easy meal of parasites, mucus, and dead scales. The groupers benefit from constantly having their bodies checked and cleaned of parasites!



Unfortunately, groupers are currently listed as critically endangered after being severely over-fished. One of the reasons they were so easy to fish is that even though they can become a huge fish they actually don't travel around a whole lot. As they mature and become an adults, they tend to find a small territory (often the opening to a cave or often using a wreck), where they wait for food to come to them. Due to this small home range they became easy fishing targets, especially spear fishing targets. That's because if a diver found one, the chances were good that they could return with a spear gun the next day and find the same fish in the same spot. With new protection regulations, fisherman are not allowed to harvest these fish.

Learn how your seafood choices, at restaurants and at home, can affect fish in the sea by visiting our Celebrate Seafood Program. You'll find tips on choosing seafood that's good for you and good for the oceans. It's all part of a blue lifestyle!