Diving into the Smithsonian's Ocean Hall

We're going through an "oceans" phase in my house, prompted by my four-year-old son's interest in sharks and the superb BBC documentaries "Planet Earth" and "The Blue Planet." So what better time to visit the new Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which opened late last month? It's an $80 million project representing the state of the art in museum design.

The hall is a remarkable re-do of a space that, until a few years ago, housed outdated displays of Indian artifacts and explanations of non-Western cultures -- very un-PC. (The museum has plans for an updated anthropological exhibition hall) The first thing you notice is the obligatory model of a giant whale suspended from the ceiling, no doubt an homage to New York's American Museum of Natural History and its famous blue whale. (DC's is a right whale, which, I learned, means it was long considered the "right" whale to hunt.)

The curators go for astonishment right out of the box, with, at the main entrance, a display showcasing freak-show oceanic diversity: a 15-foot-long jellyfish, a horror-movie size crab, and a deep-sea angler (that flat-faced species with a mean underbite and a lure extending from its head). Some of these are vibrant models, others specimens in jars (a reminder of the lingering awkwardness inherent in museum exhibitions about living animals). Above, multiple large high-def screens show repeating scenes of sporting whales and teeming schools of fish, lending a watery glow throughout.

There's too much to take in in a single visit: exhibits devoted to kelp forests, to deep-sea vents where temperatures exceed 700 degrees, and even some residual anthropological stuff having to do with the whaling techniques of native Alaskans. Plus a dollop of reasonable pro-conservation pitches.

In some cases, flashy and comprehensive can also mean confusing. In the museum's dinosaur hall, next door, you always know what you're looking at, but in the ocean hall I searched in vain for i.d.'s of some of the fearsome skeletons hanging above me. If you're in Washington, it's definitely worth a visit. And my son and I will be back, if only to nail down whether the massive shark jaws a crowd had gathered around were those of a great white, as one review I read stated, or rather of the fearsome, extinct, Carcharodon megalodon, our preferred theory. (If you don't know who megalodon is, odds are you're not living with a young dino-obsessive.)

Correction: This item originally placed the Sant Hall at the Smithsonian's American-history museum -- a dumb lapse.