Learning the A-B-Seas : Institute That Teaches Kids About Marine Life Gears for Changes

The mackerel lay open, its innards bared after a scissors-wielding student snipped a slit in its belly, and the instructor carefully peeled back its flesh.

Moments later, at the urging of the instructor, another student carefully plucked out a shimmering, purple-red organ--the heart--with a tweezers, to a chorus of ewwwwwwwwws! from the captivated youths.

Outside, students were yelling “Aye-aye, sir!” aboard the historic tall ship Pilgrim, while other youngsters clambered off another boat after netting and inspecting flat, strange-looking fish that usually reside on the ocean floor.

It was business as usual at the Orange County Marine Institute, teaching students about the wonders of the sea, attempting to spark an interest in science that the youngsters will carry back to their classrooms and to their everyday lives as well.

But in a few more days, when schools close for the summer, the goings-on at the institute will change. Youngsters will continue to stick their hands into the institute’s tide pool tanks to touch sea stars and snails. They still will pretend to be sailors aboard the Pilgrim and will venture into the ocean to look at sea creatures. But instead of half-day outings organized as school field trips, the summer adventures will be part of day camps and other vacation programs sponsored by the institute.

What’s more, adults will be able to join. Two summer programs are designed for parents and their children, ages 4 to 7, allowing them to learn sea songs and about creatures such as sea hares and spiny lobsters.

Another program opens the institute’s floating lab, a 65-foot vessel dubbed the SUM FUN, to children and adults alike for dusk cruises every Friday in August. Much like youngsters during the school year, participants on the 2 1/2-hour summer cruises will collect samples from the ocean, and examine them on deck, under the guidance of scientists.

In addition, the Pilgrim will be the stage for two theater productions every Friday and Saturday night from July 6 through Aug. 2.

“In summer, the emphasis of the institute changes. In the school year, it is accessible only to classes. In the summer, it is open to kids and adults,” said Stanley L. Cummings, director of the Orange County Marine Institute. “But in terms of our message, it is still very much the same.”

That message: “The best way we can preserve and protect the ocean is through education. If people understand the ocean, they will protect it,” Cummings said.

“Twenty years ago, there was no marine institute because there was no need for it,” he said. The coastline was largely undeveloped, and there was an abundance of undisturbed tide pools dotting the shore, he said.

“But Orange County has changed over the last 20 years. There has been tremendous growth and human impact on the coast. There are fewer natural resources, and more people are trying to get to them,” Cummings said.

While an institute instructor picked up a crab from an artificial tide pool for a group of first-graders to touch, Cummings said it is imperative for people to have direct contact with marine life to realize the importance of preservation.

“People today are so sheltered from things in the wild,” he said. If children only know a crab by seeing a picture in a book, it is not real to them. “It fades from their cultural memory, and they don’t see the need to preserve it,” he said.

The institute opened in 1981, financed with $800,000 provided by a consortium of community college districts, the county Department of Education and the county of Orange. The institute is now self-supporting, charging fees paid by the schools, many of which hold fund-raisers to pay for the outings. The institute first became 100% booked in 1985, and now schools sign up a year in advance. More than 70,000 students from four western states participate each year; 2 out of 3 schoolchildren in Orange County will have attended at least one program at the institute by the time they graduate.

And now, the marine institute is getting ready to expand. Officials are in the initial stages of raising funds for a $15-million building expansion to accommodate four times more visitors.

In addition, the institute has announced it will acquire a $1.2-million catamaran, called the R/V Sea Explorer (R/V stands for “research vessel), which will be equipped with robotic technology like that which was used to discover the sunken ships Titanic and Bismarck. Students aboard the Sea Explorer will be able to see the ocean floor with robotic cameras and maneuver devices to scoop up samples from the ocean for study aboard the vessel.

The first phase of the institute expansion plan calls for the construction of the “World of Water Pavilion,” a 27,000-foot building with living aquatic exhibits, including a simulated undersea research station and a walk-through aquarium, with visitors viewing the marine plants and animals overhead and on two sides. The first phase is expected to open in early 1994.

The second phase, called “Man and the Sea Pavilion,” will expand the institute’s current building, adding an exhibit hall, classrooms and administration offices.

The institute expansion also will include an amphitheater equipped to receive microwave signals from the R/V Sea Explorer, allowing students in the theater to watch a screen and be “telepresent” during the research vessel’s explorations.

The amphitheater also will make the marine institute the first California “down link site” in the “Jason Project,” a national science education program founded by Robert L. Ballard, the marine explorer who discovered the sunken Titanic and the Bismarck. The program allows children who gather at theaters throughout the country that receive the broadcast signals to accompany Ballard on explorations through technology. The theaters also are equipped so that students can communicate with Ballard and operate the robotic technology through remote control.

A fund-raising study for the expansion has been conducted, and major donors are about to be approached, institute officials said.

Cummings said he hopes the institute will make a lasting impression even on people who visit it only once.

“If a kid has come here and looked at a sea snail, then goes home, finds a snail in the back yard, picks it up and says, ‘Look Mom!’ . . . If she snaps, ‘Don’t pick up that dirty thing,’ everything we accomplished here is gone,” Cummings said.

“But if that child is permitted to pick it up, look at it, then maybe go look it up in a book, that’s what we’re all about. We spark the interest and hope the community does something with it.”

To register for the Orange County Marine Institute’s summer programs or reserve tickets for the theater productions aboard the Pilgrim, call (714) 496-2274. Many classes may already be filled.