Contact Us

Staff

Dr. Charlotte Seid, Collection Manager: cseid@ucsd.edu, 858-822-2818

Prof. Greg Rouse, Curator: grouse@ucsd.edu, 858-534-7973

Location

Please contact us before shipping any materials, to ensure that your delivery will be properly received.

Mailing address (for postal service only):
Attn: Charlotte Seid
University of California San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive #0244
La Jolla, CA 92093-0244

The Gilman Drive address is a central mail facility, not suitable for perishable material or shipments requiring a signature.

Mailing address (for courier services, e.g. FedEx, UPS, DHL):
Attn: Charlotte Seid, VH138
University of California San Diego
7835 Trade St. Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92121

Street address (for visitors and time-critical shipments):
Vaughan Hall, Room 138
La Jolla, CA 92037

As of January 2023, the street address of Vaughan Hall is in transition. It has been variously designated "8629 Kennel Way," "8675 Naga Lane," and "8675 Discovery Way," but the physical location has not changed.

SHELL COLLECTION DONATION INQUIRIES

We frequently receive generous and well-intentioned donation offers of private non-research shell collections. We appreciate the consideration, but we must respectfully decline due to limited storage capacity and staff time.

We suggest contacting a local shell club (see listings via Conchologists of America) or the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum.

Visiting the Collection

General Visit Information

The Benthic Invertebrate Collection welcomes visits from scientific and educational users of our materials and offers tours to support educational objectives for appropriate audiences.

Please note that we are not a museum building equipped with public displays. Our facility is a laboratory space dedicated to specimen archival and research. For laboratory safety and capacity reasons, visits are by appointment only, and tours are led by scientific staff. We encourage interested members of the public to visit Birch Aquarium, especially the Oddities exhibit highlighting the four Scripps Oceanographic Collections.

We work closely with Birch Aquarium and the volunteer-run Scripps Community Outreach for Public Education (SCOPE) to share specimens with the public and offer educational events. For school groups interested in organizing a Scripps campus tour, please reach out to SCOPE.

To plan a visit to the Benthic Invertebrate Collection, please contact the Collection Manager, Dr. Charlotte Seid (cseid@ucsd.edu, 858-822-2818), with your objective.

Please be aware that our staff travel frequently, including extended periods at sea with limited email access, so advance notice is appreciated.

Parking

Please note that there is no public parking facility at our building or in campus parking lots during the week. On-street parking in La Jolla is limited, and posted times are enforced.