If you collect Japanese prints or study fish, Ohno Bakufu's name will probably slide off your tongue with the same silky grace that stingrays use to glide across the ocean floor.

But if you are not in either category, you may be tempted to ask, Ohno who?

Between 1937 and 1945, Ohno Bakufu, a Tokyo native, traveled to an underwater depth of about 30 feet in a primitive, torpedo-shaped submarine to sketch a wide variety of fish. Ohno, which is his surname, had befriended an oceanographer who took him into the waters off the coastal community of Wakaura. The sub was equipped with a special light beam that attracted colorful bunches of confused fish.

During those years, Ohno worked with a wood carver and five printmakers to produce 68 colorful woodblock prints known as "The Great Japanese Fish Picture Collection." These images, which appear in many reference works, are well-known to print collectors and ichthyologists.

An exhibition that opens Friday and continues through Sept. 29 at be galleries in Lawrenceville showcases 30 of these woodblock prints.

One distinguishing characteristic of these prints is their ethereal quality. The casual observer might mistake them for watercolors because they are vividly colored, soft and sensual. These images lack the graphic, blocky quality sometimes associated with this art form.

Joy Borelli-Edwards, the gallery's owner, said most natural history prints were created by artists who used dead animals as their subjects. Even John James Audubon, who documented "The Birds of America" and signed his prints as being "drawn from life," spent countless hours observing birds in their natural habitats. But he almost always hunted and killed the birds, then devised a way to pose them so that they looked life-like.

By contrast, Ohno sketched living fish.

Most woodblock prints were made for Japanese buyers, said Borelli-Edwards. While Ohno produced his share of woodblock prints that depicted birds, flowers and landscapes, he made the fish series especially for the Western market, she added. Ohno, who lived to the age of 88 and died in 1976, also worked with a team of artists.

Producing these prints requires a high level of dexterity, artistry and unfailing attention to detail. An artist draws the image onto Japanese paper, which is glued face down onto a block of wood, usually made of cherry and known as the key block. Based on the drawing's outlines, wood is cut away and the paper sketch eventually disintegrates. A small piece of wood called a baren is used to press the paper against the inked woodblock. In this step, ink is applied to the special type of paper.

Each time a different color is used, the block must be re-inked. This labor-intensive, time-consuming process was repeated between 150 to 200 times just to make one print.

"Each color is a separate block," Borelli-Edwards said, "so you add color upon color upon color, block by block by block to make one singular image."

Ohno's work continued a traditional Japanese method of woodblock printing known as Ukiyo-e, which means "floating world art" and was popular from 1615 through 1868. His work, however, is known as Shin Hanga, meaning new prints, a 20th-century period of print making that began in 1915. Shin Hanga artists, emulating the tradition of Ukiyo-e artists, usually gathered in a workshop run by a publisher, who orchestrated the elements of a print-making project.

"In the traditional woodblock print process found in Ukiyo-e and continued in Shin Hanga, the woodblocks are laid face up and color is added by hand so that the finished product looks like a painting," said Sandy Kita, a senior scholar at Chatham College and an expert on Japanese woodblock prints. "I personally have a love of his work because I am a fisherman."

Mica was added to these prints, giving them a particular luster. The gallery also made the frames for the show out eco-friendly bamboo; the raw materials were supplied by Artemis, a store in Lawrenceville.