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On the Trail of DNA in the Ocean

DNA is everywhere—it can be found in hair, saliva, blood, bones, feces or even...

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Ocean Optimism Video - Linking Communities to Fisheries Science

Fish populations all over the world are declining due to overfishing and marine...

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Scientists Catalog Life on the Island of Moorea

Welcome to Moorea, a tiny, isolated island in the middle of the vast Pacific....

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X-Rays of Fish Reveal Diversity

Scientists in the Division of Fishes at the Smithsonian's National Museum of...

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Are You My Mommy?

Human infants often already resemble their parents. Visitors coo, "Oh, she has your...

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Branching Red Algae

Under the microscope, you can peer inside the cells of this filamentous red algae....

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A New Fish DROP-ping In

By diving in the Curasub, Smithsonian researchers with the Deep Reef Observation...

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Trapezia Crabs Watercolors

These watercolor sketches of Trapezia crabs were drawn by Frederick Bayer, a former...

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A Baby Moray Eel, or a Really Small Adult?

This is an unidentified moray eel, collected from 650 feet off the coast of...

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Sea Toad

This fish belongs to a group of anglerfishes known as lophiiformes. This species,...

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Mystery from the Deep: The Puzzling Case of the Whalefish

In 1895, two Smithsonian scientists described a new kind of deep sea creature,...

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Ichthyologist

Find out more about the field of ichthyology and the vast collection of fishes at...