The Region - News from Feb. 5, 1987

More than 300 people, including many parents and their young children, rallied at San Pedro’s Cabrillo Marine Museum in a well-orchestrated effort to persuade Marineland’s new owners to keep the Palos Verdes Peninsula aquatic park open. “I hope we aren’t just tilting at windmills, but my wife and I felt we had to do something,” said Bryant Winchell, co-chairman of Citizens to Save Marineland, a group formed after Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Marineland’s new owners, announced that it would close the park. The citizen’s group also wants Harcourt to keep the park’s animal care center, the only one in Los Angeles County treating stranded sea mammals, open. Harcourt, known primarily as a book publisher, owns four aquatic parks, including Sea World in San Diego. Company officials said it is closing Marineland because the park is losing money and more than $25 million in improvements would be needed for the attraction to break even.