Sea monsters welcome at Cabrillo Marine Museum

If Larry Fukuhara had his way, the Cabrillo Marine Museum’s courtyard entrance Saturday would be surrounded by sea monsters.

Not that Fukuhara, the program director at the San Pedro museum, is tired of the replicas of a killer whale, hammerhead sharks and deep-sea divers that now greet visitors.

He just has high hopes that the museum’s first Sea Monster Contest, part of the third annual Autumn Sea Fair on Saturday, will make the event more offbeat, in the tradition of frog-jumping contests and milk-carton boat races that have become annual events in other cities.

“We want to be known as the sea monster place eventually,” he said. “I’d like to see this whole place filled with sea monsters. It’ll be great for Halloween.”

The monsters can be crafted from any material, such as plywood, cardboard or cloth, but the entries must be free-standing. Organizers have placed no restrictions on size and will award prizes for the most creative entries. The contest, which was advertised at the museum and area libraries, is open to the public.

Fukuhara expects a giant turnout for the fair, which last year brought about 4,000 visitors to the beachfront museum. Admission is free, but parking in the beach lot costs $4.

With aquariums filled with sea life, a variety of exhibits and videos, and a simulated tide pool where people may touch such creatures as sea stars, sea urchins and mussels, the museum has the largest collection of Southern California marine life in the world. About 100,000 people a year visit the facility, which is operated by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

The fair, a salute to what Fukuhara calls the “bounty of the ocean,” will include a treasure hunt, ethnic food and exhibits, sea-oriented carnival games and demonstrations of sea-oriented arts and crafts, including ships in bottles and marlinespike seamanship, which involves tying knots and making splices on rope and cable. Many events will take place in the courtyard.

On Cabrillo Beach, next to the museum’s parking lot, contestants will compete in the Living Sand Sculpture Contest, in which real people are incorporated into sand structures. Last year, a team created a porpoise, but its head was that of a girl whose body was covered with sand.

Another contest will challenge visitors to guess the number of pull tabs from beverage cans in a plastic container. Horace Staubley, a museum employee, has been collecting--and counting--the tabs, which were taken from cans brought in by school classes that visited the museum during the last year. For last year’s contest, Staubley collected about 500,000 tabs.

Some events will be informational, including slide presentations and a simulated kelp forest, in which visitors will walk through an area of plastic leaves strung on ropes. The exhibit will be a replica of the ocean plants, which float in the sea and can grow up to two feet a day. Members of several conservation groups, including Heal the Bay and The Tree People, will be at the fair to hand out pamphlets.

Planners are counting on the Sea Monster Contest to be a main attraction of the fair. Although only about a dozen entry forms have been received, museum employees expect the contest to catch on within the next few years, said Dan Zambrano, an aquarist who cares for sea animals at the museum.

“We’re just trying to come up with something that people will look forward to year after year,” he said.

Fukuhara’s brother, Tracy, made the first of the sea monsters, a dragon-like creature made of plywood and spray-painted orange and turquoise. The monster is being used as a display and won’t be entered in the contest. Earlier this week, children on school field trips crowded around the monster, touching the serpent’s teeth.

But the contest isn’t all kid stuff. Most of the entrants so far are adults, Zambrano said, and the competition could be fierce. Entries will be judged on creativity and workmanship, and the winners will be awarded plaques.

Among the entrants is the Black Creative Professionals Assn., a group of advertising and public relations artists. David Brown, a member of the group, said they were planning to build a bug-eyed Loch Ness monster, which will be about three feet tall.

“I like monsters and science fiction,” Brown said. Five to 10 people are to work on the entry, which they planned to start building Thursday night.

Fukuhara said there are few rules for the contest. Most details have been left to people’s imaginations, which he says can often run wild.

“You’re out there fishing, and sometimes you imagine things,” he said. “Your imagination takes over.”

He warns visitors not to expect the Creature From the Black Lagoon, at least not this year. Fukuhara said that the museum staff looked into renting the famous 1950s movie monster as another exhibit, but it was too expensive.