The room is lined with gigantic shelves, bright blue and about as tall as the ceiling. Large rollers allow them to be moved, revealing their contents. The ceiling is blast-proofed, the shelves are earthquake-proofed and the phones and lights are spark-proofed.

It smelled of formaldehyde and alcohol. Katherine Maslenikov, collections manager for the UW Fish Collection, held up a jar of containing an alepisaurus head and smiled. This particular fish is famous for the big teeth coming out the front of its mouth, she explained.

Later on, we went to a metal drawer in one of the shelves. Maslenikov put on a pair of blue gloves and reached into the drawer, which was full of alcohol and fish. She pulled out a deep water anglerfish. The females of the species grow to adult size, while the males are just parasitic creatures that latch onto the females and exist to fertilize their eggs. In that moment, feminism took on a whole new meaning.

Next, she hooked a horn shark. Although it was discovered in the 1980s, its formal species description was recently made by a 19-year-old undergraduate at the UW.

After that, we observed the Mola mola, also known as the ocean sunfish, and the Mako shark, the fastest shark, which looked streamlined and deadly even in its stillness.

At the end of our tour, Maslenikov showed off the museum’s larvae and eggs, which make up 6.9 million of the collection’s 7.6 million individual fish. In one of the vials of alcohol was a tiny fish larva, no more than half a centimeter long. In another was a bunch of halibut eggs, which looked like flakes in a snow globe.

I also checked out the collection’s rumored two-headed shark, a mysterious specimen with unknown origins. The fish collection truly does have it all.

Reach columnist Chaitra Sriram at features@dailyuw.com.