Visitors experience ocean going explorations, state of the art marine science and maritime history education
Contract Writer
The Ocean Institute located in scenic and historic Dana Point, CA has an array of sponsors who donated the proceeds to build the impressive marine education center for the public.
Ocean seastars, commonly known as starfish, are not the only stars on site at the Ocean Institute Marine Science Center. The 33,800 square-foot, 16.5 million dollar facility is located on the edge of the Pacific Ocean in scenic and historic Dana Point, CA. Its 110 staff members, volunteers, and a Who’s Who in support groups and personnel, have been the proud recipients of numerous awards and national recognition.
The Institute, adjacent to an 8-acre Marine Life Refuge, educates and enthuses 80,000 students, 8,000 teachers and 50,000 public visitors annually and provides over 40 different marine science and maritime history programs according to Bently Cavazzi, director of communications at the Institute.
The visionaries who pointed the way to the Institute’s mission of “inspiring all generations, through education, to become responsible stewards of our oceans” have rigged full-sail. They maximize the use of the facility to include outreach and weekend visitor programs and provide services to all populations.
Lara Silowka, visitor services representative, explains how visitors can investigate the sensitivity of the seafloor seismometer by jumping on the ground outside the Student Teacher Service Building and watching it register on a screen inside.
In addition, the Center for Cooperation in Research and Education (CCRE) produces many of the programs at the Institute. The CCRE is an outreach arm that works to integrate current ocean research into Institute programs and translate it for students and the public Cavazzi added.
The Institute's Student Teacher Service Building is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and includes an administrative center with a two-story lobby. Visitors can view the Institute's interactive Sea Floor Science rotating exhibits.
For example, a recent Tsunamis Awareness exhibit helped visitors learn how a subterranean earthquake creates a tsunami wave, by simulating an earthquake in the Institute's Tsunami Research Tank. In the aftermath of the tragedy in southeast Asia, the world is still struggling to understand just what happened, how it happened, and how we can be better prepared should it happen on a U. S. coastline Cavazzi explained.
Using a state-of-the-art internally projected globe, visitors can see how waves from a massive tsunami can travel around the entire planet in under two days, or view the locations of recent earthquakes and volcanoes
Lara Silowka, visitor services representative, explained other exhibits include marine tanks for visitors to view sharks, rays, octopus, and moon jellyfish feeding. The Institute also provides presenters, who describe marine life habits at the learning centers.
Next, visitors can go seaside at the Institute and see the brig Pilgrim, a full size replica of the hide brig immortalized by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., in the classic novel, Two Years before the Mast.
The Institute invites the public to its Open House, held most Sundays, to share in a reenactment of the historical experience of sailing on the Pilgrim. Institute docents, dress in period costume, and raise sail while singing sea chanteys and telling nautical tales.
Also on board the Pilgrim, the Institute hosts a living history program to over 16,000 students a year, as well as a variety of dramatic and musical maritime theatrical performances during the summer months.
(photo by Cliff Wassmannpano) The same 200-foot- high cliffs from which cattlemen threw down leather hides to Henry Dana’s hide ship, Pilgrim, serve as landmarks for migrating whales, making Dana Point an ideal spot to Whale Watch in Southern California.
Beautiful scenery abounds in Dana Point Harbor, and the two-hundred-foot-high cliff’s bordering the Institute are not only beautiful but historical. Cattlemen of times past threw down leather hides from the towering cliffs to Dana’s hide ship waiting in the harbor below.
The cliff's also serve as landmarks for migrating whales. This makes Dana Point an ideal spot to Whale Watch in Southern California and a popular destination for winter vacationers.
Up to 50 whales pass by Dana Point every day on their migration during peak whale watching season, which is December through March. Visitors have spotted California Gray Whales, Humpback Whales, and even pods of Killer Whales, Cavazzi said.
Weekend visitors to the Institute can participate in whale watching on the Institute’s research vessel Sea Explorer. The Explorer is a 70-foot floating laboratory and fully equipped with video microscopes, touch tanks, viewing aquariums and state-of-the-art electronics. A two-and-one-half hour sea excursion provides visitors with a Blue Whale safari, and a search for sea lions, dolphin, and other sea life.
The historic tallship, Pilgrim, made famous by Richard Henry Dana's book, Two Years before the Mast, set sail from Boston and anchored several times at San Juan Bay, now known as Dana Point.
In the evening, a bioluminescence night cruise is available or during the day, visitors can enjoy snorkeling, catch-and-release fishing, and a barbecue dinner off the coast of Catalina Island.
The Ocean Institute also offers cruises led by a crew of three marine biologists on the Explorer. Participants capture small organisms that make up part of the baleen for the whales’ food chain and can view them through video-microscopes, and use a hydrophone to listen for and identify dolphins, whales, seals and sea lions.
Yet another ocean going experience is provided on the The Spirit of Dana Point, a traditionally built, accurate replica of a 1770's privateer used during the American Revolution, Cavazzi said.
The tallship, Spirit of Dana Point, is also available for charters, day and overnight voyages to Santa Catalina Island, dinner cruises, weddings, parties, burials at sea, corporate team building and has also been used for movies, documentaries, commercials and catalogue shoots, said Cavazzi.
If you are a student and want to learn what is happening in the world of oceanography, or if you just want a place to be cool while you go to school, the Institute provides ways to experience the ocean you might think were possible only if you wished upon a starfish!
Silowka explained the Institute’s on-site educational facilities are open throughout the school week and during summer months. Here students are shown dissecting fish and learning the anatomy of sea life.
Silowka explained the Institute’s on-site educational facilities are open throughout the school week and during the summer months. Teachers provide instruction to visiting students who can sail on a tallship as young researchers and sea explorers attend residential camps, study the inter-tidal ecosystem right in the tide pools of the Marine Refuge, dissect fish, learn the anatomy of sea life, and view the entire life cycle of the Moon jellyfish.
There is more, students spend the night learning about sharks and rays, wave action, studying at a real National Weather Service Coastal Observation Station, and tour a replica of Richard Henry Dana’s historic tallship, the Pilgrim, she said.
In addition, Silowka explained the Institute staff utilizes modern videoconferencing equipment for distance learning programs to assist teachers in educating their students, and/or the Ocean in Motion mobile lab provides access to special needs students and underserved populations.
Finally, during a visit to the Chambers Gallery Book and Gift Store, you can buy a fossilized shark tooth and see the latest materials and ocean-themed items available for sale to visitors. Proceeds from sales benefit Institute programs.
Refer to the Ocean Institute for more information on the many exciting activities available to visitors.
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