September at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

As summer fades away – along with the tourists that season brings – just in time to welcome back the local community, Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is exhibiting a new local species – a juvenile wolf-eel, Anarrhichthys ocellatus. At nearly three-feet long, the wolf-eel is neither wolf nor eel, but a member of the wolffish family (named for their large front teeth) and will grow to be about seven feet long. The eel-shaped, grayish colored wolf-eel is patterned with gorgeous dark spots and can be found peering out of a rocky outcropping in the Aquarium’s Kelp Forest Exhibit.
The Aquarium typically closes for maintenance for most of September, but this year the facility will remain open throughout the month for regular hours: from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday – with the exception of Tuesday, Sept. 11th, when the Aquarium will be closed for Coastal Cleanup Education Day. Weekends, the Aquarium is open from 12:30 to 5:00 p.m. Meet the wolf-eel and visit the more than 100 additional species on exhibit.