GLENDALE : Exhibit Puts Pupils in Touch With Sea Life

Second-grader Jasper Kim danced around a foot-deep saltwater tank filled with purple, black and red creatures chanting, “Will it bite me? Will it bite me?”

Jasper, 8, was one of 600 Verdugo Woodlands Elementary School students who discovered how it feels to pet and hold starfish, baby sharks, velvety-black sea slugs, hermit crabs, purple urchins and anemones.

Students were exposed to sea animals--most native to the California coast--through a traveling exhibit, “Tide Pool Touch,” sponsored by the Living Science Foundation. The nonprofit foundation, based in Woodside, Calif., brought its show to Verdugo Woodlands Elementary in Glendale on Monday and Tuesday.

After being reassured that tide pool creatures were friendly, Jasper plunged his hand into the icy tank water and grabbed onto the waving tentacles of a lime-green anemone. “O-o-o, it’s sticky,” he said.

Marine biologist Kim Matthews, who travels with the exhibit to elementary schools statewide, told students that a more appropriate name for a starfish is a sea star. The sea star is not a fish, he said, explaining that it walks on the ocean floor rather than swimming in the water above it.

“He feels kind of funny,” said Lauren Brennan, 7, when asked to comment about her first time holding a bright red sea star. “He’s all rough and spiny, and kind of heavy too.”

Students jumped back in horror when a classmate lifted a foot-wide sheep crab out of a simulated tide pool. The crab’s beady eyes glared at the children as its legs waved wildly in the air.

“He wears his skeleton on the outside and he has no bones on the inside,” Matthews said.

The foundation hopes the traveling tide pool will get students excited about science before they start making decisions in junior high about taking biology, zoology or chemistry, Matthews said.

Verdugo elementary’s cultural arts chairwoman, Linda Burk, said the traveling sea show provides a cost-effective way for children to participate in a field trip without leaving campus.

“For us to bus this many groups to an ocean tide pool would be cost-prohibitive. This way they get a hands-on experience right in the school’s back yard,” Burk said.