Selling Sea Life by the Seashore

Something fishy is happening amid the cafes and shops of Long Beach’s trendy Pine Avenue that hints at the latest wave in Southern California tourism.

Like a bit of caviar served before the big meal, the folks behind the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific are opening a preview center on Feb. 25 to whet the public’s appetite for the main course: the 156,735-square-foot aquarium scheduled to open in the summer of 1998.

The 1990s have been called the “Age of Aquariums” and aquariums “the zoos of the 1990s.” More attractions are announced every year and attendance has been growing at aquariums across the country.

Southern California has become a particularly warm pool of aquarium activity, as previously reported. Several Southland projects are swimming upstream, but Long Beach’s aquarium is well ahead of the others in the race to become the area’s first world-class aquarium.

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Construction on the Long Beach aquarium, financed primarily with municipal bonds, is nearing the halfway point, said Warren Iliff, chief executive of the Aquarium of the Pacific. Exterior walls are up and the building’s distinctive wave-like roof line is becoming apparent.

“The building is so unique that I think it may become to Southern California what the Opera House is to Sidney,” Iliff said.

To whip up enthusiasm for the aquarium, the preview center will be open at 130 Pine Ave. every day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. It will feature a model of the $117-million aquarium, drawings of the exhibits planned, live creatures on display in a “mini-reef” exhibit, and a gift shop.

“I don’t think we planned to do a preview center, but we’ve gotten so caught up in the Disney way of doing things. I get so excited about the aquarium that sometimes I say, ‘We’re gonna bury Disney!’ And people look at me like I’m some mad fisherman,” Iliff said.

The aquarium is projected to attract as many as 2 million visitors in its first year of operation, which places it somewhat shy of the 14 million-plus that Disneyland draws each year. But that attendance, if achieved, would make the Aquarium of the Pacific one of the most popular in the nation.

About 35 million people visited aquariums across the country last year, up from 23 million in 1989, according to the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn.

The aquarium anchors Long Beach’s 300-acre Queensway Bay project, which the city hopes will transform the waterfront into a tourism magnet. Other aquarium projects, new or expansions, have been discussed in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Oxnard, San Pedro, Dana Point and Exposition Park in Los Angeles.

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The Long Beach aquarium will focus on the Pacific Ocean, using 21 diverse exhibits and habitats, a million gallons of sea water and 12,000 marine specimens. Visitors will enter through a soaring lobby that will house a life-size replica of a blue whale, the world’s largest animal, and then travel through exhibits that re-create the waters of Southern and Baja California, the northern Pacific and the tropical Pacific.

The aquarium is already beginning to acquire animals for its exhibits. The first two, a gag birthday gift to Iliff, were a pair of goldfish named Bill and Hillary.

“Unfortunately, Bill died,” Iliff said. “But Hillary is still going strong, and so is Bill No. 2.”

Sea life actually slated for exhibition, including about two dozen venomous but beautiful creatures donated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, are being housed at other facilities until the Aquarium of the Pacific’s tanks are ready.

Nancy Rivera Brooks can be reached via e-mail at nancy.rivera.brooks@latimes.com or by fax at (213) 237-7837.

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Go Fish

Aquariums are in the swim these days, with attendance at U.S. attractions floating higher. In millions:

1996: 35

Source: American Zoo & Aquarium Assn.