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 Calf - Click to see a larger image

Bottlenose Dolphin Calf - Click to see a larger image

Gray Whale Calf - Click to see a larger image

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

Bottlenose Dolphin Calf

3.25" long; scale 1:20
The Bottlenose Dolphin normally lives in small groups, usually containing up to 12 animals. However, group size may be highly variable since they live in fission-fusion societies within which individuals associate in small groups that change in composition, often on a daily or hourly basis. Typically, a group of adult females and their young live together in a pod, and juveniles in a mixed pod. Several of these pods can join together to form larger groups of one hundred dolphins or more. Males live mostly alone or in groups of 2-3 and join the pods for short periods of time. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2109 - $3.00

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

Great White Shark - Click to see a larger image

Humpback Whale Calf - Click to see a larger image

Killer Whale Calf - Click to see a larger image

Great White Shark

10.25" long; scale 1:20
Great white sharks' reputation as ferocious predators is well-earned, yet they are not (as was once believed) indiscriminate "eating machines". They typically hunt using an "ambush" technique, taking their prey by surprise from below. Near the now-famous Seal Island, in South Africa's False Bay; studies have shown that the shark attacks most often occur in the morning, within 2 hours after sunrise. The reason for this is that it is hard to see a shark close to the bottom at this time. The success rate of attacks is 55% in the first 2 hours, it falls to 40% in late morning and after that the sharks stop hunting. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2112 - $12.00

Humpback Whale Calf

6" long; scale 1:40
Found in oceans and seas around the world, humpback whales typically migrate up to 25,000 kilometres each year. Humpbacks feed only in summer, in polar waters, and migrate to tropical or sub-tropical waters to breed and give birth in the winter. During the winter, humpbacks fast and live off their fat reserves. The species' diet consists mostly of krill and small fish. Humpbacks have a diverse repertoire of feeding methods, including the spectacular bubble net feeding technique. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2101 - $4.00

Killer Whale Calf

4" long; scale 1:40
The Orca or Killer Whale (Orcinus orca), less commonly, Blackfish or Seawolf, is the largest species of the oceanic dolphin family. It is found in all the world's oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to warm, tropical seas.
Orcas are versatile and opportunistic predators. Some populations feed mostly on fish, and other populations hunt marine mammals, including sea lions, seals, and even large whales. There are up to five distinct Orca types, some of which may be separate subspecies or even species. Orcas are highly social; some populations are composed of matrilineal family groups which are the most stable of any animal species. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2103 - $3.00

Sperm Whale - Click to see a larger image

Tiger Shark - Click to see a larger image

Whale Shark - Click to see a larger image

Sperm Whale

12" long; scale 1:40
The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is the largest of all toothed whales and is the largest toothed animal alive, with adult males measuring up to 20.5 metres (67 ft) long. The whale was named after the milky-white waxy substance, spermaceti, found in its head and originally mistaken for sperm. It has a cosmopolitan distribution across the worlds oceans. The species feeds on squid and fish, diving as deep as 2,200 metres (7,200 ft) in order to obtain its prey, making it the deepest diving mammal in the world. Pods of females and young live separately from older males. Sperm whales live for 50 years and possibly more. (Read more about it at Wikipedia)

SAF2115 - $17.00

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

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)