Monterey Bay Aquarium's new Open Sea exhibit

 Our readers also like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of our personal favorites for its groundbreaking and continuing research into the waters it sits next to and ironically housed in a former sardine cannery.
Out to sea and on the go—life’s in constant motion in the open ocean. Welcome to the Aquarium’s largest exhibit, a place where tunas and sharks speed past, sardines swarm in huge, glittering schools, and sea turtles swim lazily across the 90-foot window. Nearby, colorful puffins await their next meal, and brilliant jellies pulse through the water.A green sea turtle slowly glides by the glass at the new Open Sea exhibit July 1 at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The exhibit, which used to be known as the Outer Bay, has since undergone renovations with new animals introduced to the displays. Conner Jay When you're out there, they say — far out of sight of land — you realize that you're on a sort of desert, watery but desolate.

Or so it might seem on first impression.

But a closer look reveals a whole universe of life found on the constantly changing palette of blues, grays and blacks that make up the colors of the water in a zone known as the "pelagic" (from the Greek) or, more commonly, the open sea.It's all part of a $19 million transformation that re-opened the big tank to the public on Saturday.

"It's been like remodeling a 30,000 square-foot home while 18 people are living in it," said David Cripe, special exhibits coordinator at the aquarium.

"We stressed over how we were going to move things and catch things. But we got it done two weeks ahead of schedule."

The exhibit, rechristened "the Open Sea," features new species in the big tank and other nearby displays, including a sand bar shark from Oahu, tufted puffins and other seabirds, a high-tech interactive video wall display on plankton, deep sea jellies and numerous art installations.