Institute of Oceanography

Location

The institute stands at 1 Cầu Đá Street, on the shore at the southern end of the city where the coast road from the centre reaches the Cầu Đá quarter and its port^[1][3]. OpenStreetMap maps its grounds as a single plot of land with the institute and its museum inside it^[9]. Since the reform of 2025 the address is written as Nha Trang ward, Khánh Hòa province^[3]; that ward was formed on 16 June 2025 by Resolution 1667/NQ-UBTVQH15 from the former wards of Vạn Thạnh, Lộc Thọ, Vĩnh Nguyên, Tân Tiến and Phước Hòa, and its administration has operated since 1 July 2025^[10].

Founding and the French period

The Service océanographique des pêches de l'Indochine was created on 14 September 1922^[1][2]. The English Wikipedia article records that Yersin proposed its creation and that A. Krempf became its first director when it was raised to the Institut océanographique de l'Indochine (Viện Hải dương học Đông Dương) in 1929^[1]; the Vietnamese article dates that upgrade to 1930^[2]. The two accounts differ by a year and neither cites the decree.

The institute's own page on the museum says that a marine biology museum (Bảo tàng Sinh vật biển) was built by the French immediately after the Fisheries Service was set up, and gives 1923 for that^[5]. In 1952 the institute was renamed Hải học viện Nha Trang (Institut océanographique de Nha Trang), and in 1954 the French government transferred it to the administration of the south^[2].

1954 to 1975

Under the southern administration the institute took part in the NAGA programme with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose vessel Stranger worked the coast in 1959 and 1960, and in the Co-operative Study of the Kuroshio (CSK) from 1965 to 1977^[1][2]. In the north a separate line of bodies grew up in the same years: a Gulf of Tonkin survey team in 1959, a marine research station at Hải Phòng in 1961 and the Hải Phòng Institute of Marine Research at 246 Đà Nẵng Street in 1967^[2].

The institute since 1975

After 1975 the Nha Trang institute and the Hải Phòng bodies were brought together under the Vietnam Academy of Sciences as the Nha Trang Institute of Marine Research (Viện Nghiên cứu biển Nha Trang)^[2]. Decision 23/KHCNQG-QĐ of 19 June 1993 established it under its present name, the Institute of Oceanography, with a headquarters at Nha Trang and branches at Hải Phòng and Hà Nội^[2][3]. In 2001 those two branches were raised to independent institutes of the academy, and the Nha Trang institute has stood alone since^[1][2][4].

The institute's website lists 9 specialised departments, 2 administrative departments and 3 monitoring stations besides the museum, and a staff of 154: 2 professors, 3 associate professors, 32 doctors, 55 masters and 42 engineers or bachelors^[3]. The academy's centenary article of 2022 gave a smaller total of 123 staff, with 2 professors, 2 associate professors, 19 doctors and 40 masters, and counted 11 research departments and 2 key laboratories^[4]. The two counts are of different dates and the website's is undated.

The Oceanographic Museum

The museum inside the institute is open to the public and, according to the institute, receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year^[5]. Its website states an adult admission of 40,000 VND, 20,000 VND for students, 10,000 VND for secondary pupils and free entry under the age of six, as of 2026^[6]. A new exhibition, Đại dương kỳ bí, opened on 2 September 2025^[6]. The display covers 5,000 m² and combines preserved specimens with tanks of live animals^[3][6].

The size of the collection is given differently by different sources. The institute's and the museum's own pages say about 23,000 specimens of 5,000 species and over 300 live species^[3][6]; the academy's 2022 article speaks of tens of thousands of specimens of more than 6,000 species and 400 live species^[4]; English Wikipedia gives over 24,000 specimens of more than 5,000 species and Vietnamese Wikipedia over 24,000 specimens of more than 4,000 species^[1][2].

The best known exhibit is a whale skeleton. The two Wikipedia articles give its length as 18 m, the Vietnamese one adding a height of 3 m and stating that it had lain buried for more than 200 years in the Red River delta^[1][2]. A 2008 report in Báo Khánh Hòa gives 19 m and a weight of nearly one tonne, and says the bones were found in 1994 by villagers of Hải Hậu in what was then Nam Hà province, 1.2 m below ground and 4 km from the sea^[7]. In 2005 the museum was voted one of ten most satisfying tourist sites of the year^[2].

Recognition

The institute held its centenary ceremony in Nha Trang on 14 September 2022^[4] and received the First-Class Labour Medal for its contribution to marine science^[1]. The academy's article on the occasion counted the honours as recognising the period 2017 to 2021^[4]. On 7 March 2024 the museum's website recorded that its director, Đào Việt Hà, received the Kovalevskaia Award^[6].

Wikidata records the institute as item Q137916777, an instance of research institute, in Vietnam, located in Nha Trang and part of the academy, with Wikipedia articles in English, Italian, Korean and Vietnamese^[8]. No fetched source records a listed historic-relic designation for the institute or its buildings.