Ocean Hall
In Ocean Hall, you can experience the story of the ocean through a single animal: the blue whale, the largest animal ever to have existed. The museum’s complete blue whale skeleton is the centrepiece of the exhibition.
When a whale dies in the ocean, death is not an ending but a beginning. Its body slowly sinks to the seabed, becoming food and shelter for thousands of organisms for decades to come. Surrounded by the animals that feed on a whale fall, you can follow the food chain from the death of a single whale to a thriving ecosystem on the ocean floor.
What you can experience
When you enter Ocean Hall, you step beneath the surface of the sea. Soft light filters down through the glass ceiling of the dome, creating the feeling of standing on the seabed and watching the sunlight shine through the water. An expansive soundscape surrounds you.
The blue whale. Come face to face with a complete blue whale skeleton on the ocean floor. The whale stranded in 1931, the first documented case of its kind in Denmark. It was later exhibited in Copenhagen and toured Sweden before becoming part of the museum’s collection.
The whale fall. Discover the animals that transform a whale into a vast ecosystem. First to arrive are sharks, fish and other scavengers, which feed on the soft tissue. Crabs, hagfish and deep-sea sharks gather for the feast. Over the course of weeks and months, more and more of the skeleton is exposed. But even then, the whale continues to give life. Small worms known as ‘zombie worms’ or ‘bone-eating worms’, which feed on bones, settle in the ribs and spine. They release nutrients that sustain entire communities of organisms. For decades, the dead whale can remain an oasis on the seabed, a place where life flourishes amid the darkness of the deep sea.
The Ocean Portal. Embark on a journey through the ocean, taking you from Danish shores across open water to the deep sea and the ocean floor. Here, you experience the ocean from the perspective of its own animals, rather than from a human point of view, and discover the different worlds that exist beneath one and the same surface. The journey unfolds on an eight-metre-wide LED screen.
The deep sea. Meet some of the strangest animals in the museum’s collections: fish specimens from the deepest layers of the ocean, including some of the deepest-living fish ever recorded. The deep sea is the place on the planet we know least about, and the animals that live there challenge your idea of what life can be.
Humans and the ocean. See the traces we leave behind in the ocean: fishing gear, nets and lines, as well as plastic recovered from the sea itself. They are tangible evidence that humans are part of the ocean’s system.
- The blue whale skeleton: Stand before a complete skeleton of the largest animal ever to have existed – the first blue whale in Denmark’s history to be documented, which stranded in 1931.
- The whale fall ecosystem: Follow the food chain from the whale’s death to the thriving ecosystem that develops around its skeleton.
- The Ocean Portal: Dive from Danish shores through the open ocean and into the deep sea on the eight-metre-wide LED screen.
- Deep-sea fish: See some of the deepest-living fish ever recorded.
The ocean is one interconnected system
The ocean is not one world but many, and yet everything is connected.
It begins with the invisible. Plankton – the microscopic plants and animals that live in the upper layers of the water – form the foundation of the ocean. They produce much of the oxygen you breathe and provide food for everything from small fish to the largest animals in the world. No plankton, no fish; no fish, no whales.
A whale’s enormous body consists of millions of microscopic cells which, when it dies, are eaten by everything from sharks to worms.
That is what makes a whale fall such a fascinating story: the largest body in the world sinks to the seabed and becomes food for scavengers, worms and bacteria, which transform it into nutrients from which new life can grow. Nothing in the ocean goes to waste, and nothing exists in isolation. Coral reefs, the deep sea, coastal waters and the open ocean are all part of one cycle, in which what happens in one place is felt somewhere else.
Our lives, too, affect the cycle beneath the surface. The ocean stabilises the planet’s climate, and coastal communities around the world depend on it and live alongside it. We have always fished, sailed and told stories about the ocean – and today, we also leave our waste, plastic and heat in it.
This is a system we are part of, and one we have the opportunity to protect. The great whales, slowly returning to the world’s oceans, show that conservation really does work when we choose to act.
