A touch of life

Alicia Robinson

It was a cold and spiny day for visitors to the Orange Coast College

marine science department Saturday.

Well, it was cold and spiny for anyone who stuck a hand in the

marine science lab’s touch tank and had a brush with a sea urchin.

The department offered an open house, as it does once every

semester, and invited the public to look at its cold- and warm-water

aquariums, check out displays of scuba gear and marine life, and

touch sea stars and urchins.

Students in the marine aquarium class explained the displays and

pointed out the varieties of sea life that fill the tanks. They are

the experts because they set up and maintain the department’s

aquariums day-to-day, said OCC marine science professor Dennis Kelly.

“As far as I know it’s the only student-run aquarium on the

planet,” he said.

The class gives students hands-on experience to prepare them for

jobs in aquarium maintenance, either commercially or at a public

facility such as the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

“We lecture about water chemistry in the lecture class, but in

here they actually balance water chemistry,” Kelly said.

The program drew Dennis Singh, 20, of Santa Ana, because unlike

playing guitar or other hobbies, he’s been able to stick with

aquarium work.

“This hobby I’ve been into my whole life,” he said. “It’s my

passion.”

The best part for Singh is getting to feed the different animals,

which he said he finds soothing.

While some tanks sport peacefully waving anemones or beautiful,

brightly colored fish, the squeamish might not exactly be soothed by

a 4 1/2-foot-long , slimy looking Moray eel.

Luckily, on Saturday no one was expected to touch the eel, but the

curious could hold a sea urchin or sea star.

A few visitors looked but were reluctant to touch until OCC

student and former aquarium manager Nikolai Alvarado, 22, of

Huntington Beach, convinced them.

He told Claudia Contreras and her daughter, Jennifer, 6, both of

Costa Mesa, what the sea life was called in English and Spanish, and

he coaxed Claudia Contreras to put out her hand for the purple, spiny

sea urchin.

Jennifer liked the big pink sea star best, but she held the urchin

too.

“It was kind of heavy and it was hard,” she said.

Even when the science building is closed, people can learn from

five 150-gallon tanks, set into the building’s walls, which can be

viewed from outside. They’re lighted up at night, and nearby is a

display case with explanations of what’s living in the tanks.

The displays in the tanks are created by students like Adam Ereth,

20, of Newport Beach.

He and a friend caught the silver dollar-sized baby stingrays in

one of the tanks, and they also caught the fish, cleaned the sand and

bought some eelgrass for the display.

“We have a lot to learn from the ocean,” he said. “We know

practically nothing.”

Saturday’s open house was free, but students were raffling off

gift baskets and other items and accepting donations to pay for fish

food and other program needs that aren’t funded by the college.

The school pays for the needed electricity and other nuts and

bolts for the marine aquarium class, but shortfalls in state

education funding mean the program is always looking for money, Kelly

said.

“I think a hard part about working at the aquarium here is

wondering how much the future students are going to take to the

aquarium,” Ereth said. “It’s up to the students to give what they

can.”

Kelly expected as many as 400 visitors to stop by the marine

science lab Saturday. Another open house is planned for the end of

March, he said.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.