The University’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History played host to dozens of families on Friday night for the opening of its newest exhibit Tricking Fish: How and Why Lures Work.
“We’ve got all sorts of fun facts and cool information about fish,” said museum studies graduate student Sara Auer.
The museum organized the Fishy Family Friday with the help of more than 25 volunteers who gave demonstrations on fly-fishing casting, tying lures and different fishing techniques. The opening celebrations also included a scavenger hunt, fish painting and paper fish stuffing.
Oliver Cauble, 5, jumped up and down as he proudly displayed his stuffed fish creation, which he made using colored fish cutouts stuffed with paper pieces.
“Stuffing the fish was my favorite part,” he said.
Another exhibit featured wooden replicas of different history-making heavyweight fish caught in Minnesota. Visitors were challenged to guess how much the record-catches weighed, based on their length and width. Max Cantrell, 12, said this was his favorite display because it was fun to see how big a fish could get.
The Tricking Fish exhibit is a traveling display from the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota. Auer said the exhibit would be open for about three months before it heads to its next location.
Museum volunteer Rebecca Hazer said she gets a kick out of the exhibit because she used to fish in Minnesota where most of the fish on display come from.
Through colorful photographs and many different hands-on-activity displays, visitors immersed themselves into the world of fish where they learned about environmental factors that control the marine creatures’ movement and vision.
Tanner Murphy, an 11-year-old whose father read about the event in the newspaper, said his favorite part of the night was learning about the way fish see.
“They have eyes on the side of their heads which is cool because they see differently from us,” he said.
The Museum’s Volunteer and Tour Coordinator Ann Craig said that while the museum usually holds its exhibit openings on a Saturday, they decided to hold the Tricking Fish opening on a Friday because it is what most museums do.
“Exhibits are usually on a Friday. We just decided to do it on a Friday to make it a family friendly event,” Craig said.
While proceeds from the night’s activities will go towards operating costs of the museum, Craig said the night was not about making a profit, but holding a family friendly event where people could learn more about fish.