Day Tripping: Santa Cruz's marine discovery center

By Karen Aiello
kaiello@modbee.com

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SANTA CRUZ -- Some people travel over the hill to Santa Cruz to sit and watch the giant waves, some enjoy a ride on the Giant Dipper and others set their sites on a visit to the Seymour Marine Discovery Center to gander at the giant whale skeleton.

The Seymour Center is a part of the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California at Santa Cruz. Dedicated to the study and enrichment of marine and aquatic life, this facility is unlike other aquariums and museums in that it is an actual working marine laboratory. Visitors may enjoy the exhibit stations, which include an aquarium, a touch tide pool, a testing pod where experimentation and research is conducted and a viewing pod, where a number of ocean inhabitants may be seen.

Also available at the Seymour Center are tours where visitors are led around the laboratory and given the inside scoop on the methods and the discoveries of the facility. The tours are offered each afternoon at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. and are filled on a first-come basis. In addition to the daily tours, the center offers Marine Mammal Research tours on specific Thursdays and Sundays each month. The tour offers the opportunity to learn along with the scientists all about their work studying dolphins, seals, sea lions and whales. The August dates for this tour are the 13th and the 23rd -- advance reservations are required and the tour is best suited for adults and children over the age of 10.

WHERE: 100 Shaffer Road, end of Delaware Avenue, Santa Cruz
WHEN: Through Aug. 31, Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.
ADMISSION: General admission, $6; seniors (64 and older) and children ages 4-16, $4
GETTING THERE: Take the Altamont Pass (Highway 580) west of Tracy toward San Francisco. In Pleasanton-Dublin, take Interstate 680 south. (In San Jose, it becomes Interstate 280.) In southwest San Jose, take Highway 17 toward Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz take Highway 1 north. (Highway 1 becomes Mission Street.) Turn left on Swift Street. Turn right on Delaware Avenue. Follow Delaware to the Long Marine Lab entrance where Delaware ends at Shaffer Road, near Natural Bridges State Park.
DRIVE TIME: 2 hours (MapQuest)
MORE INFO: 831-459-3800 or online at www2.ucsc.edu/seymourcenter.

While sea life fills the exhibits, pools and research cubicles of the inside of the center, the surrounding grounds also offer some wildlife fun. Elephant seal sculptures can be found frolicking out front and a skeleton of a gray whale makes his home out back.

Also sitting outside of the laboratory -- and what many consider to be the highlight of this marine research operation -- is the impressive skeleton of a blue whale, which is 87 feet long and has been affectionately nicknamed "Ms. Blue." It is the largest whale skeleton on exhibit in the world and is a giant of a specimen.

Bee assistant librarian Karen Aiello can be reached at kaiello@modbee.com or 578-2392.