Today Phoenix is healthy and strong, but more than a decade ago in 1997, this 45-foot female North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) became so entangled in fishing gear that scientists feared she would die. She dragged a fishing net behind her through the ocean for nearly two years before it broke free.

Phoenix’s ability to survive earned her her name and a place in the hearts of the researchers who had been tracking her since her birth in 1987. In the newly opened Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, visitors are greeted by an exact replica of Phoenix, suspended from the ceiling and plunging downward with mouth agape. The model is accurate down to the whale’s crusty skin patches—called callosities—and the scars on her tail and jaw caused by the fishing gear.

The Smithsonian’s new 23,000-square-foot exhibition is the centerpiece of an initiative focused on bringing international attention to the complexity and importance of the ocean. Sant Ocean Hall, created in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, features mounted specimens and exhibits paired with innovative technology to provide a vibrant and educational look at the richness of the world’s oceans.

The North Atlantic right whale is an endangered species, and the model serves as the Sant Ocean Hall’s ambassador, linking the exhibition’s major themes for visitors. “The message is that the ocean is a global system, essential to all life, including yours,” Exhibit Developer Jill Johnson says.

For some visitors, the most dramatic whale on display may not be the full-size right whale but a species some 40 to 50 million years old, provisionally labeled Maiacetus inuus, the earliest mammal to live a majority of its life in the ocean. Discovered in the deserts of Pakistan in 2002 by Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan, this creature had well-developed limbs with feet and toes better adapted for swimming than for walking. Its lower backbone also was more flexible than the backbones of its hoofed-mammal ancestors, suggesting that it swam with assistance from its tail. A cast of this fossil in the Sant Ocean Hall is the first public display of M. inuus anywhere.

“The discovery of this very old species is significant in that it helps place whales in their proper evolutionary niche,” Brian Huber, a Smithsonian paleontologist and Sant Ocean Hall co-curator, says.

“About 40 to 50 million years ago, the ocean was very rich with life, fish and other creatures, in shallow water. Mammals were diversifying on land, and there was a lot of competition for food. So, some mammals began living part of their lives in the ocean, just to feed. At some point, they began living all of their lives in the ocean,” Huber explains.

The next major evolutionary development for whales was their change from carnivores, with teeth for ripping and tearing flesh, to plankton feeders. It also is a climate change story, Huber says. “We have a fantastic prehistoric specimen from Antarctica, Llanocetus denticrenatus, to tell that story. Its teeth are widely spaced and very crenulate.”

Based on scars on the upper part of the mouth between the teeth, Ewen Fordyce, the New Zealand scientist who studied and prepared the specimen, suggests that there were “very short strands of baleen between those teeth.”

Fordyce has identified this as the first filter-feeding whale, whose diet was plankton, rather than fish. “The specimen is 38 to 36 million years old, from a time when Antarctica was starting to get cold,” Huber says. “Ice sheets started forming in Antarctica, and phytoplankton started proliferating in the ocean. Plankton became a new food resource because of the cooling climate. Whales adapted to this new food source by forming baleen, a flexible horn-like substance that allows whales to strain large quantities of plankton from seawater and eat it. And this specimen, discovered in 1985, is fantastic!”

Giant squid

Equally fantastic is the specimen of a modern-day giant squid. The Sant Ocean Hall is the only place where visitors can see both a 24-foot female and a much smaller male giant squid preserved for display. Long a staple of science fiction, precisely because so little is known about them, giant squids have never been seen alive in the ocean depths, although one was captured in still photographs. In fact, says curator Michael Vecchione, the number-one question he gets is, “Are they real?”

Vecchione heads NOAA’s National Systematics Lab, located in the National Museum of Natural History. He assures visitors that giant squids are indeed real and live at depths of 2,000 to 3,000 feet, often in canyons on the continental slope. The squids on exhibit were collected off Spain.

Displaying the giant squids was problematic. In recent years, the District of Columbia fire marshal severely limited the amount of flammable alcohol preservative that can be used in the Natural History Museum. Many specimens stored in alcohol for study had to be moved off site. Only 10 gallons of alcohol were authorized for use in the entire Sant Ocean Hall. The female squid alone requires 1,200 gallons of fluid, Project Manager Elizabeth Musteen points out.

The solution, in both senses of the word, was provided by the 3M Co. and its product Novec 7100 Engineered Fluid, a liquid used for cleaning and heat transfer applications in the electronics industry. It is crystal clear, nonflammable, nontoxic and nonexplosive. It preserves specimens with a protective coating rather than being absorbed by the specimen, as happens with the fluids alcohol and formalin. 3M Co. donated 12,000 pounds of Novec 7100 EF, enough to display the giant squids and other large specimens.

Larval fish

Carole Baldwin, curator of fishes at the museum and a Sant Ocean Hall curator, has devised a display in which visitors can match adult fish with their tiny larvae by using colored bar codes, comparable to those in supermarkets, related to elements of the animal’s DNA. Larvae of fish and other marine organisms, Baldwin explains, often look nothing like what they will become as adults. Also, larvae and adults often inhabit totally different parts of the ocean.

Fish larvae may measure just 0.2 to 0.6 inches, Baldwin says, and often have strange-looking adaptations not found in adults. At the Smithsonian’s research station in Belize, Baldwin and colleagues are working to identify the larvae of as many of the 500 local fish species as possible. In the past, after capturing live larvae, the researchers had to raise them in tanks and watch them slowly grow into juveniles to determine their species.

“Using this genetic technique, our success in identifying larvae skyrocketed,” Baldwin says. “Up until 2004, we had identified fewer than 50 fish species during a 10-year period by rearing them. In the next two years alone, using bar codes, we added 70 species. Even more exciting, our DNA data are suggesting that there may be many more species of coral-reef fishes in the Caribbean than previously documented.”

Baldwin and the other members of the Sant Ocean Hall team hope that the exhibition will cause visitors to think more about the ocean and its significance to life on Earth and perhaps inspire some students to become ocean scientists. Researchers from the Smithsonian, NOAA and other institutions were involved in every detail of the exhibit, she notes, to assure the accuracy of the information presented. A special kiosk will provide constantly updated results of the latest ocean research and news about the ocean.

“The main message is that there is just one ocean, a global system,” Baldwin says. “Some of the facts are mind-boggling. It’s well known that 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by the ocean, but when you start looking at volume, it turns out that approximately 95 percent of the livable space on the planet is in the ocean, because of its huge depth.” The kicker, she adds, is that so far, “it’s estimated that less than five percent of the ocean has been explored.”