Fathom

[ Pacific coast · open daily 9–6 · a living ocean ]

Come meet the ocean's strangest, softest, most necessary neighbours.

Two hundred thousand gallons of living seawater, floor to surface — sunlit kelp, drifting jellies, and the pressure-proof creatures of the deep. Fathom is a public aquarium and a working marine hospital. Every ticket helps put the ocean back.

Plan your visit Descend the water column ↓
Species in care
0
Gallons of seawater
0
Deepest exhibit
0m

[ The water column ]

Down through four oceans
stacked on top of each other.

The sea isn't one place — it's a ladder of them. Every hundred metres the light thins, the cold deepens, and the pressure piles on until it would crush a submarine. Life adapts to each rung. Follow the gauge down.

0 – 200 m

Sunlight Zone

Epipelagic

Where the ocean is still lit and warm. Photosynthesis happens here and nowhere below it, so this thin skin feeds nearly everything deeper. Also the crowded one.

  • Green sea turtle

    Can nap on the reef for hours — its heart slows to a beat every few minutes.

  • Moon jelly

    No brain, no bones, 95% water — and older than trees by 200 million years.

  • Pacific sardine

    Moves in bait-balls of millions that turn and flash as one silver animal.

200 – 1000 m

Twilight Zone

Mesopelagic

A blue so deep it's nearly black. The last of the sun fades out by the bottom of this band, so animals start making their own light. Every night, this whole layer rises to feed — the largest migration on Earth.

  • Lanternfish

    Wears rows of light organs like a runway — likely the most abundant vertebrate alive.

  • Hatchetfish

    Thin as a coin edge-on, with belly lights tuned to erase its own shadow from below.

  • Humboldt squid

    Two metres of muscle that flickers red-and-white to talk in the dark. Hunts in packs.

1000 – 4000 m

Midnight Zone

Bathypelagic

Total, permanent darkness. No sun ever reaches here — the only light is the light animals carry. Food is so scarce that bodies turn soft and slow, mouths turn enormous, and nobody wastes a calorie on colour.

  • Anglerfish

    Fishes with a glowing lure grown from her own spine. The male fuses on for life as a fin.

  • Gulper eel

    Almost all mouth and whip-tail — it can unhinge to swallow prey larger than itself.

  • Dumbo octopus

    Flaps two ear-like fins to hover a mile down — the deepest-living octopus known.

4000 m +

The Abyss

Abyssopelagic

Near-freezing, pitch black, and pressed under four hundred atmospheres — the weight of a small car on every square inch. Life here runs on marine snow: the slow drift of everything that died above, finally landing on the floor.

  • Giant isopod

    A dinner-plate cousin of the pill-bug that can fast for over four years between meals.

  • Tripod fish

    Stands on three stiff fin-stilts, facing the current, and simply waits for dinner to arrive.

  • Sea pig

    A pink sea cucumber that walks the floor on tube-feet, tidying the snow like a deep-sea vacuum.

[ On the floor ]

Four rooms, four oceans.

Every exhibit is a real slice of habitat, plumbed with living seawater and run by the people who care for it. Come early — the divers feed the big tank at half past ten.

The Kelp Cathedral

Sunlight

A two-storey giant-kelp forest that sways on a real surge machine. Rockfish, garibaldi and a resident wolf-eel named Mabel who owns the bottom-left cave.

Volume
68,000 gal
Species
41
Feature
live surge · dive show 10:30

Drift

Sunlight

A dark, round gallery of back-lit jelly tanks. Moon jellies, sea nettles and a column of comb jellies that scatter light into moving rainbows. The room the kids go quiet in.

Volume
9,400 gal
Species
11
Feature
360° viewing · low-sensory hour 9–10

Midnight Pass

Deep sea

A pitch-dark corridor lit only by the animals in it — anglerfish, flashlight fish and a pressurised deep tank kept at 4 °C. Your eyes take a minute. Let them.

Volume
22,000 gal
Species
17
Feature
chilled to 4 °C · bioluminescence live

The Tide Pool

Hands-on

A shallow, waist-high pool you're allowed to touch. Sea stars, anemones, hermit crabs and a very patient decorator crab. Staff are always at the rail to show you how — two fingers, gentle.

Volume
3,200 gal
Species
24
Feature
touch-safe · wheelchair-height rail

[ The other half of the job ]

A ticket is a bucket
bailed from a sinking sea.

Behind the public galleries is a marine hospital that never closes. We pull entangled sea lions off the beach, warm hypothermic turtles back to life, and raise cold-stunned pups until they can hunt. Most go home. The ones that can't become the animals that teach a hundred thousand kids a year why this matters.

Every admission funds a rescue truck, a dive team and a coral nursery. You don't just visit the ocean at Fathom — you put a little of it back.

— The Fathom stewardship team

0 Animals rehabbed & released
0 Plastic pulled from our coast
0 Coral fragments outplanted
0 Acres of eelgrass restored

[ Plan your visit ]

Come spend a day under water.

Open 9 to 6, every day but the winter solstice. Members get in free and jump the queue. Every tier helps fund the hospital downstairs.

Adult day pass$64

Demo checkout — nothing is charged and no booking is made. See the README.