Sea Center, Santa Barbara, Teacher Field Reports

Sea Center, Santa Barbara, Teacher Field Reports

Patricia Schoenfeld @Hoover Elementary: . . . . Fri, Aug 31, 5:44PM PST (-0800 GMT)
Thursday, July 19, Sea Center, ……………. The Sea Center provides a wonderful opportunity to gain "hands-on" experiences into oceanography. Our group had a private tour and we were able to touch and feel the sea life in the tank. They did mention that they rotate the sea life out as to keep stress to a minimum. The museum also offers classes for students that allow them to run tests in and around the water. We were able to conduct some of these tests to see how red the tide was, look at organisms in the water, figure out the depth of the ocean floor at a particular point, and use a microscope to look at some sea life up close and personal. The tour guides were very knowledgeable and the sea center was a great experience button ………………………………..

Sea Center Group: . . . . Thu, Aug 9, 3:24PM PST (-0800 GMT)
August 9, 2001 Our team’s destination today was the Sea Center and the Maritime Museum. Team Members: Sharon Schumm, Linda Boyer, Sue Hoffman, Clara Alvear, Joan Ward, and Dwayne Palasek. The entry to Stearn’s Warf was 18’ above sea level and its latitude was 34.41006 and the longitude was –119.68590. This was the place that soldiers tricked Pirate Bouchard. The Sea Center elevation was 14’, latitude 34.41069, and longitude –119.68587. The Natural History Museum runs the Sea Center. For more information regarding the Sea Center refer their web site at We visited the Sea Center Museum first, which had beautiful displays, which included the California Spiny Lobster, which is 40 years old and weighs about 10 pounds. Also, the California Garibaldi (state fish) was in the same tank. The law protects the Garibaldi. It’s a territorial fish, which protects the female’s eggs until they have hatched. 40 pound lobster named “Boris” star fish Garibaldi Fish In the touch tanks were a variety of invertebrates that fascinated our team. The largest invertebrate is the giant squid (not in the touch tank). There were shark eggs from a swell shark. The gestation of the shark egg is anywhere from seven to eighteen months depending on the temperature of the water. The colder the water, the longer the gestation. The sea cucumber was one of our favorites. For protection is will literally spill its guts or eviscerate. It can grow a new set of innards in about two months. Other spiny-skinned echinodermata included sea stars and sea urchins. Of the gastropods family, we viewed a large sea hare (slug), which can grow to more than a foot long. It feeds on surf grass and kelp. It needs to be handled carefully or it will emit a deep purple “ink” for protection. In the decapod family was a masking crab. It attaches anemones, sponges, bits of shell and seaweed to its shell for camouflage. It shed its shell like a snake. We saw one eating a kelp snake quite daintily with its little claws. Masking Crab After our wonderful experience at the Sea Center, we went to the Maritime Museum where we had a delightful guide named Brook Sawyer. An 88-year-old veteran of sea navigation.

At the SEA CENTER, there were various displays in the tide pools of all types of life from limpets to sea hares . The kelp beds in Santa Barbara atr the home for the Garibaldi fish and the Opal eye fish which when young can breathe air. The largest sea mammal in the area is the Blue Whale and the giant squid can grow to be 59ft. and weigh 550pounds.

Gerry, Sue, Lisa and Tricia: . . . . Thu, Jul 19, 2:42PM PST (-0800 GMT)
Field report from Sue, Gerry, Lisa and Trish on July 19, 2001 …….This morning we visited the Santa Barbara Sea Center located on Stearns Wharf. We were greeted by Elise, Luke and Yvonne. They helped us understand what kind of services the sea center has for the local community. We were especially interested in any programs that were available to the schools. Because of our interested it was decided that they would walk us through their “Oceanographer for a Day” program that they use with visiting school children. We were able to view many different sea animal in the several touch tanks that were available to us. Luke showed us a decorator crab and explained how they ate by storing food on their back. As they get older they are referred to as “sheep crabs” because the algae and seaweed is shed. It was explained that divers go out into the channel to collect specimens for the tanks and specimens are kept in the tanks for a period of two weeks……….After spending time looking at the touch tanks we moved outside to begin learning about how oceanographers check the different conditions of the ocean. We were able to observe that there was an extreme red tide caused by plankton. We checked the visibility of the water used by using a Secci meter which was a metal disc attached to a rope knotted in meter increments. It was slowly dropped into the ocean until it was not visible. At that point it was pulled back up and we observed that the visibility of the disk was at one meter. Luke explained that oceanographers have standardized charts for describing the color of the ocean. He demonstrated how an oceanographer in Hawaii would use a number (example PCS123) and it would be matched to a color chart used by someone in California…….Next the Eckman Grab was demonstrated. This is a device that is used to study organisms in sandy environments. We were able to view organisms which were small and narrow and which had adapted to the sandy environment. Elise did not have a name for these organisms which looked like tiny worms…..The final device we used was a Plankton tow. This was a tool used to gather different types of plankton for the purpose of studying the density of plankton in certain parts of the water. The plankton tool looked like a giant windsock and Elise said that a replica could be easily made using a pair of pantyhose! After the plankton were collected they were viewed on a slide with a microscope…..Our next stop was at the Santa Barbara Maritime Center where were greeted by Nancy McCagney, our tour guide, and Donna Casano who was in charge of the docent program at the museum. We began our tour outside of the museum viewing several historic boats; namely, one called the Ranger which was used by Humphrey Bogart and other famous people. It was donated to the center by the Catalina Tuna Club….Next Nancy explained why the ecosystem of the channel and coast was thought to be unusual. She explained that our coast runs east to west and not north/south as is usual; this in itself created an unusual ecosystem because cold currents coming down from the north meet at Point Conception to warm water currents from the south thus creating a swirling affect which accommodates cold and warm animal environments at different points of the channel. The ecosystem is very dense making; 70% of California fishing comes from the channel islands making it the second largest area for fishing industry……Inside the Maritime Museum, we saw many exhibits featuring marine life, ocean sporting, and the history of the Santa Barbara particularly Stearns Wharf . We saw early implements such as an early protractor, chronometer, sextant, compass and telescopes, divers helmets. At this point Nancy emphasized the difference between scuba diving and deep sea diving. She stated that deep sea diving and the apparatus used enabled communication with the surface. We viewed the oldest diving helmet made by Siebe in l820 in London. Our group also viewed the Pioneer 1 two person submersible that is outside of the museum. It was used in the Santa Barbara Channel during the 70s and 80s for underwater engineering and construction. The crew inspected pipelines, ocean bottom, well heads, and other structures.….In concluding our tour we were informed that we had been Nancy’s first tour group. We were quite surprised to find this out because she had been a very informative guide and we truly appreciated her knowledge and wealth of information…. Destination2-Sea Center 7/10…Latitude and Longitude where Pirate Bouchard was tricked by the soldiers N34 24.722 and W 119 41.337…Latitude and Longitude of the Sea Center N34 24.648 and W 119 41.143…The largest sea mammal living in the channel waters are blue whales as they migrate through. The largest invertebrate would include squid, octopus and colonies of sponges and tunicates…. Destination 3 – Maritime Museum 7/19…..The most famous off Anacapa Island was Winfield Scott in 1853. It was significant because everyone survived…..The latitude and longitude were N 34 24.253 and W 119 41.594………..The website for both the Natural History Museum and Sea Center is button

Mark at Los Berros: . . . . Fri, Aug 17, 2:25PM PST (-0800 GMT)
One of the most popular exhibits at the sea center is the touch tank. It has sea stars, urchins, anemones, sea cucumbers and chestnut cowries, just to name a few. The one that I found most interesting was the decorator crab. It uses its saliva to attach different object to its body for camouflage.