A Close Look at Animals of Another World

They were tiny children looking at the tiniest of sea stars and learning about big issues of the ocean environment.

The pink brittle star, instructor Rick Baker told them as he balanced the fragile animal on his index finger, is generally found in the mud at the bottom of Orange County’s coast. And if biologists don’t find them, they know to test for contamination.

The inch-diameter sea star is a regular sight on the Orange County Marine Institute’s ocean wildlife cruises, held in the afternoon and evening off Dana Point during the summer.

The cruises take adults and children as young as 4 a step beyond tide pools to see, touch and, for the very brave, even taste what goes on at the bottom of the sea.

A recent evening’s excursion included everything from the sight of a flying fish skimming over the surface swells to a translucent octopus hauled up in deep-sea nets.

Using its 70-foot research vessel, the R/V Explorer, the Marine Institute has pumped up its educational offerings to families this summer, from the basic 2 1/2-hour wildlife cruise that functions as a sort of real-life aquarium of the plants and animals off the coast, to night cruises that use squidding lights to reveal glowing fish and worms, to an ecology safari that explores underwater kelp forests and reef communities off Catalina Island.

In addition, the institute offers a series of free lectures at 12:30 p.m. Sundays.

“We’ve really been trying to expand our public programs to offer a choice,” so that people down at Dana Point Harbor for just the day can take part, said Julie Goodson, director of the institute’s at-sea programs.

As the Explorer heads out of Dana Point Harbor for the wildlife cruise, the adults at first seem far more interested in the ocean than the children, who are more enraptured by climbing up and down the ladder to the bridge and checking out the captain’s global positioning system. It is the parents who exclaim over the sight of a great blue heron perched nobly on the corner of the bait dock. And during the half-hour-long trip out to sea with little to view beyond dappled waves, it is mostly adults who catch the rare sight of a flying fish suddenly whizzing past the boat.

It’s even hard to grab much attention when grappling jaws go down to the bottom of the ocean and pull up a vat of marine mud. The crowd is invited to touch and smell the silky stuff, which many do, and a few brave participants even taste it.

But when the mud is placed on a screen and washed off, revealing the tiny sea animals that were there all along, the children eagerly crowd around for a thorough examination. Besides the pink brittle star, there is a minuscule ice cream cone worm, which excretes a kind of cement and glues sand around itself into a cone-shaped house, and crabs so small they are barely visible until they move. The children grab tweezers, pluck the animals off the screen and sort them into labeled dishes. Even the teenagers are lured away from their nonchalant perches at the railing for a look.

But the small hands are rough with the tweezers and the youngsters are a little shocked to find that most of the minuscule animals are dying.

“You’re killing him, dummy!” one preschooler with curly hair pipes up to a boy who appears to be trying to figure out how a crab’s body is put together by pulling it apart.

But no mind. By then, the nets are hauling in an even more alluring catch and the boatload of people is drawn to the stern of the boat as the animals are sorted into pans of water.

To most people who have done any fishing in the area--or bought much local fish at a market--the sights are fairly pedestrian. Flatfish. A scorpion fish that Baker warns them can sting like a hundred bees. Shrimp, some bigger sea stars and a seven-inch crab.

To the children, however, much of this is new and their eyes are wide. They’ve never seen a fish with its eyes on one side, or one that stings with real poison. For that matter, it never occurred to them that shrimp, which they think of as rubbery bits of curled-up meat, were actual animals that looked a little bit like see-through lobsters and that could wiggle away from attempts to grab them.

They also are enthralled by a small, graceful octopus that immediately tries to hide itself under a pipe, which suits everyone just fine, since Baker tells them that it bites.

But the star of the show is a longspine combfish, which wraps itself into a rigid doughnut shape as Baker holds it aloft, making it virtually impossible for a predator to swallow.

The adults and teenagers are back to being fascinated with that sight as the boat heads back to harbor, except for one family off at the other end of the boat, trying with plastic bag and bucket to cope with their son’s motion sickness. Coming equipped with seasickness remedies is highly recommended.

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Marine Institute Field Trips

Here are the scheduled dates, descriptions and costs of the Orange County Marine Institute’s regular educational field trips this summer. For reservations and further information, call (714) 496-2274.

* Marine Wildlife Cruise: 2 1/2-hour excursion, afternoons and evenings, uses nets to pull up wildlife off the coast for examination. Fourteen more scheduled on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through August. $20 adults, $14 children ages 4 to 12.

* Bioluminescence Night Cruise: 2 1/2-hour evening cruises use nets and squidding lights to examine glowing plankton, worms and other sea life. Scheduled for July 25, 31; Aug. 1, 2, 29, 30. $20 adults, $14 children ages 4 to 12.

* Summer Island Safari: Daylong trip to Catalina Island includes snorkeling, catch-and-release fishing, exploration of underwater kelp forests and reef communities. July 26, Aug. 9. $40 adults, $35 children ages 9 to 12.

* Sunday lectures: Free talks at 12:30 p.m. each Sunday. First come, first served. July 27, “Dana Point Geology”; Aug. 3, “Using Underwater Sound to Detect Global Warming”; Aug. 10, “Saving an Urban Refuge”; Aug. 17, “Sex in the Sea”; Aug. 24, “Surfscience.”