School
Outreach Program
As part of our School Outreach Program, the Fish Collection hosts tours of the
facility year-round to students in grades 3-12. The tour normally takes about one hour and
consists of two parts. The first part involves a tour of our facilities where
we prepare, catalog, archive, and conduct research on our museum holdings that
total over 7.6 million individual specimens, and roughly 4,000 species. You will see how a natural history collection
of this magnitude is arranged and managed, in addition to learning about its
importance and its uses.
The second part of the tour involves a detailed look at some of the more
interesting examples of fish diversity. Fishes are the most diverse group of
vertebrates (the large group of animals to which we belong), with roughly 29,000
living and fossil species formally described by science. During the course of
history, fishes have evolved a remarkable array of body shapes and behavior,
and have radiated into nearly all aquatic habitats. Using our collection of
preserved specimens, we will show you many interesting and unusual fishes from
around the world and discuss the evolutionary adaptive significance of their
morphology.
The maximum group size that we can accommodate is 25 students. This size limit does not include teachers and parents. Reservations are required and should be made one to two months in advance by contacting Katherine Maslenikov, Collection Manager, via email or at (206) 543-3816.
For directions on how to get here please see "Visiting the Collection." Parking arrangements for large groups can be made by calling the UW Department of Transportation Services, (206) 685-7167. Alternatively, small groups can find metered parking all along Boat Street, right out in front of the Fisheries Teaching and Research (FTR) Building where the Fish Collection is housed, downstairs, in room 005.