A new wave for marine explorers

ON a recent family visit to the remodeled Ty Warner Sea Center in Santa Barbara, 8-year-old J.P. Schaedel had a question for the teenage docent at the warty sea cucumber exhibit. Minutes earlier, J.P. had run his fingers over the knobby-skinned invertebrate and -- like most sea cucumber neophytes -- marveled at the creature’s unexpected soft texture.

Now J.P. was back, and curious: “If you step on them do they spit out their guts?”

Tyler Parent, 13, chuckled affirmatively, then explained that a misguided foot is not the only reason why a sea cucumber might belch out its innards. “It can happen when they get over-irritated too,” Parent said.

Nature has provided the sea cucumber an ability to give the heave-ho to most of its internal organs when sufficiently stressed, later regenerating a new set. Who knew?

Such are the moments of discovery at this marine education facility, which is again open to the public on Stearns Wharf after closing nearly four years ago.

J.P.’s parents, Jack and Jackie Schaedel of La Canada Flintridge, had long anticipated returning to the expanded Sea Center with their son and their 5-year-old daughter, Emma, in tow after visiting the original facility before it closed.

“We have checked back every so often over the past few years waiting for this day,” Jackie Schaedel said, as J.P. and Emma tugged on her to follow them.

Owned by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, the Sea Center began in 1987 as a visitor center for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The small one-story building was eventually shut down in December 2001, humbled by antiquated exhibits and waning public interest.

Reconstruction planning and fundraising for a more ambitious facility began in earnest in 1999. The Nature Conservancy would donate adjacent building space, allowing for a two-story structure that more than doubled the Sea Center’s size to 6,734 square feet. Beanie Baby mogul Ty Warner donated $1.5 million to complete the reconstruction.

The new $10-million marine museum was introduced to the public during grand opening festivities in April. Mostly, all that visitors to the old facility will recognize in the new one are the life-size mama gray whale and her baby calf that remain suspended dramatically from the ceiling.

The mission at the new complex, said director Jenny Theodorou, is simple: “To inspire passion for the marine environment.”

To that end, several distinct exhibit centers offer close encounters for visitors of all ages to observe and take part in basic marine science and research activities. A premium is put on interactivity to maximize the experience. “We find that if it is just a tacit experience, that if people are just looking at exhibits, they don’t take away the same appreciation,” Theodorou said. “The more we engage them, the more they remember about the experience, the more appreciation they have for the marine environment in general.”

AN orderly passage through the Sea Center begins at the Living Beach exhibit, a simulated tide pool environment. A 1,500-gallon tank -- with surging and ebbing waters -- is replete with familiar tide pool creatures, many of which can be viewed from an acrylic-walled tunnel. It’s a tight, bent-knee space for grown-ups, but it offers an underwater perspective that elicits hoots and hollers from youngsters.

“They are just infatuated,” said David Studer while watching his 4-year-old twins, Mark and Ines, inside the tunnel. Studer and his wife, Hortensia, visited the Sea Center recently while on vacation from Tuscon.

“We’ve been to the beach, but this is the first time they really see things,” he said.

The Sea Center focuses on the marine environment found along the West Coast and, specifically, the Santa Barbara Channel. Permanent interactive features include video touch screens throughout the building that offer visitors a chance to learn more about sea life in local waters and on display. The 1,200-gallon Channel Catch Tank houses many fish species commercially harvested in the channel.

To accentuate the marine laboratory experience, changing exhibits highlight some of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s ongoing research projects.

The Bio Lab is where J.P. considered the intestinal fortitude of the warty sea cucumber. It’s also where the diminutive swell shark is on close-up exhibit. Visitors are told how the shark is able to greatly swell its body by taking in water: This makes it problematic for predators to pull it from a crevice on the rocky ocean bottom. Several of these kelp forest denizens are on view, along with the shark’s rectangular egg sacs, known as mermaid’s purses, encasing unborn pups.

At the Wet Deck, the pier has been reconstructed to allow access to the water below. Visitors are encouraged to assume the guise of an oceanographer. Research instruments -- such as the Van Doren sampler, which is used to collect water, and the Eckman grab, for sediments -- are lowered into the water. The samples can then be viewed with a video magnifier to reveal darting plankton and other minute sea life.

Docent Carol Stickney, 58, was operating the video magnifier one recent afternoon when a kindergarten-age girl suddenly identified a living thing she had snared with a plankton net. “There you are! There we go!” she said.

A crab larva.

“It is exciting watching them discover,” Stickney said. “It’s fascinating with all the different personalities and ages. Some are very brave and others just want to look on.”

THE museum journey continues upstairs at the Submerged Science Lab, where water samples can be tested for salinity and other qualities.

In addition, a small theater presents short films continuously, and a computer kiosk allows for a kind of mammal karaoke. Choose a mammal, such as the orca, then choose an emotion, such as aggression, and the kiosk will play back the actual recorded sound. The visitor then mimics the mammal’s call, and the computer will graphically display the comparison.

Not on the touch-me list is one of the Sea Center’s most prized possessions: a 7-foot female dolphin. Found dead, washed ashore on a local beach, it has been preserved with polymer. A large swath of her side is cut away to display in exquisite detail internal organs and the unborn baby dolphin she was carrying.

Before descending to the first-floor exit, there is one last stop: the Window on the Channel, which puts Santa Barbara’s postcard coastline and the ocean on display through expansive glass panes. Visitors are beckoned to stop and gaze -- and consider their experience.

“This is a unique opportunity to promote a sense of stewardship for this resource,” Theodorou said. “People do not even know what is in their backyard.”

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Ty Warner

Sea Center

Where: 211 Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily

Price: $7; $6 for ages 13 to 17 and 65 and older; $4 for ages 2 to 12; free for children younger than 2

Info: (805) 962-2526, www.sbnature.org/seacenter