Monterey Bay Aquarium in California showcases the repertoire of ocean life that populates a nearby offshore rift the size of the Grand Canyon.
Each year two million people visit one of the world's largest indoor oceans three hours south of San Francisco. Monterey Bay is home to life that ranges from sharks, barracuda and giant octopus to thousands of tiny anchovies swirling around an enormous oval tank.
The aquarium is a non-profit learning centre, designed to bring people closer to sea life.
It sits in the middle of America's largest marine sanctuary and showcases more than 120,000 creatures and 525 species in more than 100 exhibits.
Huge crowds gather to listen to the explanation of undersea activities broadcast through bubbling masks by divers paddling through three-storey-tall forests of kelp in a 1.5-million-litre tank.
Another room allows children to handle scores of sea creatures from Monterey's tidal pools, while the most popular exhibit features the antics of a colony of cuddly sea otters - orphans who are rehabilitated by the aquarium's rescue programme, the largest of its kind.