Whales, Sharks, Marine Mammals - Monterey Bay Aquarium Collection

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Collection

Wonderful creatures of the world's oceans made small.

All of these exquisite replicas have been sculpted under the guidance of educators and curators of the renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Each model is created exactly to scale. Composed of solid heavy vinyl, each is hand painted in exacting detail. Collect them all!

Beluga Whale

9" L x 3" H. Suggested age 3+.
Belugas are highly sociable creatures. Groups of males may number in the hundreds, but mothers with calves generally mix in slightly smaller groups. When pods do aggregate in estuaries, they may number in the thousands. This can represent a significant proportion of the entire beluga population and is the time when they are most vulnerable to hunting.
Beluga are also known for being rather playful, as well as spitting at humans or other whales. It is not unusual for an aquarium handler to be sprayed down by one of his charges whilst tending a beluga tank. Some researchers believe that this skill may be utilized to blow away sand from crustaceans at the sea bottom. Unlike most whales, they are capable of swimming backwards. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2110 - $9.00

Beluga Whale Calf

4.5" long; scale 1:20
Newly-born belugas are about 1.5 m (5 ft) long and weigh 80 kilograms (176 lb).The baby beluga is usually born grey but not always. This whale is unmistakable when adult: it is all white and has a dorsal ridge rather than a fin. The head is also unlike that of any other cetacean - its melon is extremely bulbous and even malleable. The beluga is able to change the shape of its head by blowing air around its sinuses. Again unlike many dolphins and whales, the vertebrae in the neck are not fused together, allowing the animal flexibility to turn its head laterally. The belugas mouth is called the rostrum. The rostrum has about 8 to 10 teeth on each side of the jaw. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2111 - $3.00

Blue Shark

7" L x 2.5" H. Suggested age 3+.
The blue shark is an oceanic and epipelagic shark found worldwide in deep temperate and tropical waters from the surface to about 350 meters. In temperate seas it may come closer to shore where it can be observed by divers, while in tropical waters it occurs at greater depths. It is found from as far north as Norway to as far south as Chile. Blue sharks are found off the coasts of every continent, except for Antarctica. In the Pacific its greatest concentrations occur between 20° and 50° North but with strong seasonal fluctuations. In the tropics it is uniformly distributed between 20° N and 20° S. It prefers waters with a temperature range of 7 to 16°C but will tolerate temperatures of 21°C or above. It is highly migratory with records from the Atlantic showing a regular clockwise migration within the prevailing currents. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2118 - $6.00

Bottlenose Dolphin

7.5" L x 3" H. Suggested age 3+.
The Bottlenose Dolphin is one of the most common and well-known dolphins. Recent molecular studies show it is in fact two species, the Common Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin (T. aduncus). Bottlenose Dolphins inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide.
Bottlenose Dolphins live in groups that typically number about 15 dolphins, but group size varies from solitary bottlenose dolphins up to groups of over 100 or even occasionally over 1000 animals. Their diet consists mainly of small fish. Dolphin groups often work as a team to harvest schools of fish, but they also hunt individually. Dolphins search for prey primarily using echolocation, which is similar to sonar. They emit clicking sounds and listen for the return echo to determine the location and shape of nearby items, including potential prey. Bottlenose Dolphins also use sound for communication. Sounds used for communication include squeaks and whistles emitted from the blowhole and sounds emitted through body language, such as leaping from the water and slapping their tails on the water. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2108 - $6.00

Gray Whale Calf

5" long; scale 1:40
The Gray Whale or Grey Whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is a whale that travels between feeding and breeding grounds yearly. It reaches a length of about 16 meters (52 ft), a weight of 36 tons and an age of 50–60 years. Gray Whales were once called Devil Fish because of their fighting behavior when hunted. The Gray Whale is the sole species in the genus Eschrichtius, which in turn is the sole genus in the family Eschrichtiidae. This animal is one of the oldest species of mammals, having been on Earth for about 30 million years.
Gray Whales are distributed in a North-eastern Pacific (American) population and critically endangered North-western Pacific (Asian) population. A third population in the North Atlantic became extinct in the 17th century. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2105 - $4.00

Hammerhead Shark

9" L x 2.5" H. Suggested age 3+.
The nine known species of hammerhead range from 0.9 to 6 m long (3 to 20 feet). All the species have a projection on each side of the head that gives it a resemblance to a flattened hammer. The shark's eyes and nostrils are at the tips of the extensions.
The hammer shape of the head was once thought to help sharks get food, aiding in close-quarters maneuverability and allowing the shark to turn sharply without losing stability. However, it was found that the special design of its vertebrae allowed it to make the turns correctly, more than its head. But as a wing the hammer would also provide lift; hammerheads are one of the most negatively buoyant of sharks. Like all sharks, hammerheads have electroreceptory sensory pores called ampullae of Lorenzini. By distributing the receptors over a wider area, hammerheads can sweep for prey more effectively.[2] These sharks have been able to detect an electrical signal of half a billionth of a volt. The hammer-shaped head also gives these sharks larger nasal tracts, increasing the chance of finding a particle in the water by at least 10 times as against the ability of other 'classical' sharks. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2107 - $6.00

Manta Ray

8" L x 2" H. Suggested age 3+.
Mantas are extremely curious around humans, and are fond of swimming with scuba divers. Although they may approach humans, if touched, their mucus membrane is removed, causing lesions and infections on their skin. They will often surface to investigate boats (without engines running). They have the largest brain-to-body ratio of the sharks and rays. Mantas frequent reef-side cleaning stations where small fish such as wrasses and angelfish swim inside the manta's gills and all over its skin to feed, in the process cleaning it of parasites and removing bits of dead skin. Mantas are filter feeders: they feed on plankton, fish larvae and the like, passively filtered from the water passing through their gills as they swim. The small prey organisms are caught on flat horizontal plates of russet-coloured spongy tissue, that span the spaces between the manta's gill bars. Mantas are known to breach the water into the air. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2114 - $8.50

Narwhal

10.75" L x 1.5" H. Suggested age 3+.
The most conspicuous characteristic of the male narwhal is its single, extraordinarily long tusk. It is an incisor tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw and forms a left-handed helix. The tusk can be up to three metres (nearly 10 ft) long (compared with a body length of 4-6 m [13-16 ft]) and weigh up to 10 kg (22 lbs). About one in 500 males has two tusks, which occurs when the right incisor, normally small, also grows out. A female narwhal may also produce a tusk, and there is a single recorded case of a female with dual tusks.
The purpose of the tusk is unknown, though various explanations have been proposed. One explanation suggested that the tusk was used to pierce the ice covering the narwhal's Arctic Sea habitat. Another suggested the tusk was used in echolocation. Other hypothesized uses include courting females, defense, and foraging for food. In yet another theory, the tusk is primarily used for showmanship and for dominance: males with larger tusks are more likely to successfully attract a mate. This hypothesis was suggested by the activity of "tusking", in which two males rub tusks. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2122 - $7.50

Tiger Shark

8" long; scale 1:20
The tiger shark is a dangerous predator, known for eating a wide range of items. Its usual diet consists of fish, seals, birds, smaller sharks, squid, and turtles. It has sometimes been found with man-made waste such as license plates or pieces of old tires in its digestive tract. It is notorious for attacks on swimmers, divers and surfers in Hawaii; and is often referred to as the "bane of Hawaiian surfers" and "the wastebasket of the sea".
The tiger shark is second only to the bull shark in number of recorded attacks on humans and is considered, along with the great white, bull shark, and the oceanic whitetip shark to be one of the sharks most dangerous to humans. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2117 - $7.00

Visible Dolphin Anatomy Kit

Plastic Model Kit by 4D Vision.
18 pre-colored pieces. Includes fact guide and step-by-step illustrated assembly instructions. Features skeletal structure and internal organs. Detachable Organs and Body Parts. Comes with Display Platform. Fine Detailed Sculpturing with hand painted parts. Size: 26.5 cm long. Assembly required. Ages 8 and up.

FDV26103 - $32.95

Visible Great White Shark Anatomy Kit

Plastic Model Kit by 4D Vision.
20 pre-colored pieces. Includes fact guide and step-by-step illustrated assembly instructions. Features skeletal structure and internal organs. Stands 13 1/4" long. Assembly required. Ages 8 and up.

FDV26111 - $32.95

Whale Shark

10.25" long; scale 1:40
The whale shark, Rhincodon typus, is a slow filter feeding shark that is the largest living fish species. As a filter feeder, it has a capacious mouth which can be up to 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) wide and can contain between 300 and 350 rows of tiny teeth. It has five large pairs of gills. Two small eyes are located towards the front of the shark's wide, flat head. The body is mostly grey with a white belly; three prominent ridges run along each side of the animal and the skin is marked with a "checkerboard" of pale yellow spots and stripes. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)