COSTA MESA : OCC Aquarium May Be Shut Down

For the second time in its history, Orange Coast College’s cold-water aquarium is facing extinction, officials said.

Because of state budget cuts in education, the college is spending its money only on classroom instruction, said marine biologist Dennis Kelly, who supervises the aquarium.

“This is the largest cold-water aquarium in Orange County that is open to the public. It would be a shame to have to close it,” Kelly said.

Although it costs only $2,500 a year to operate the aquarium, Kelly said the college cannot afford even that much any longer.

“We’ve got enough money to last until the end of the fall semester, around December,” Kelly said. “But then we’ll have to shut down.”

The aquarium was closed for lack of funding once before, in 1989. But when Orange Coast’s president, David A. Grant, came up with $1,000, it was reopened in 1991. At that time the school added three new courses in aquarium studies designed to train students to run the salt-water facility, Kelly said.

There are two courses on maintaining aquariums and one course in which students act as members of a public aquarium’s board of directors.

“They study fund-raising, budgeting, everything to administer a public aquarium,” Kelly said.

Some graduates of the courses have landed jobs with aquarium supply companies and public aquariums.

Kelly also raised money to keep the aquarium program afloat by selling T-shirts.

The aquarium tanks, housed in the Lewis Center for Applied Science, have windows on an outside wall for public viewing. .

Altogether, there are six large tanks featuring marine life commonly found off Orange County’s coastline. One tank features a foot-long mantis shrimp.

“It looks a little like a lobster and is very active, putting on a good show for the public,” said Kelly.

Two swell sharks, named for the way in which they inhale water and dramatically expand when they’re threatened or disturbed, also draw crowds around their tank. There also are several species of rays and a cabezon, a deep-water rock fish with long spines that can inflict painful wounds.

One 60-gallon tank contains such coral reef dwellers as a puffer fish, damsel fish and striped shrimp.