Monterey Bay Aquarium

The best aquarium in North America, housed in a converted sardine cannery at the western end of Cannery Row. The scale is impressive — the Open Sea exhibit holds one million gallons and contains tunas, sunfish, hammerhead sharks, and sea turtles swimming in open water — but the details are what stay with you. The two-storey kelp forest tank, backlit and full of leopard sharks and rockfish drifting through amber fronds, is as close as you will get to scuba diving in the bay without getting wet. Wild sea otters float and dive in the harbour just outside the windows.

The aquarium has a serious conservation mission: it helped bring the pacific sardine back from local extinction and runs ongoing research into the bay's ecosystem. The deep-sea gallery, with its bioluminescent jellyfish in darkened tanks, is one of the stranger and more beautiful rooms in California. Plan for at least three hours; the timed-entry tickets go fast in summer.

886 Cannery Row, Monterey. Open daily.

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A story
The aquarium opened in 1984 in a converted sardine cannery — the Hovden Cannery, the last one still standing on Cannery Row. Its founders included marine biologist Chuck Baxter and ocean scientist Sylvia Earle, and from the start it was conceived not just as an attraction but as a working research institution. In 2004 it became the first place in the world to successfully keep a great white shark on public display, though the shark was released after 198 days when it began preying on other fish in the tank.