Heal the Bay Blog

Our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium this month has unveiled a very special exhibit:  the endangered tidewater goby. We are only one of two aquaria where the public can see this special local species. Aquarium Operations Manager Jose Bacallao writes about his relationship with this unique little fish — and a friend dedicating his life’s work to its survival. 

About 10 years ago a young man applied for an  aquarist internship position at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. This guy spent his teenage years playing baseball and racing, wrecking cars and trucks. He had recently enrolled in a local college, knowing that he wanted to work in the ocean, within the ecology of our Bay, but unsure where to start.

He started working for me at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium feeding animals, cleaning tanks and learning about local sea life. I took him on and quickly learned that this kid was great – really hard working, funny and hungry, really hungry, for knowledge.

He quickly became a special part of our Aquarium family so we hired him to help with our programs and made him part of the staff. Before long he was off to San Diego to finish his bachelor degree and then he started working as professional aquarist at the Birch Aquarium. From there he went on to work and receive his graduate degree from Cal State Northridge and today he has begun working on his doctorate at UCLA.

This story was supposed to be about the tidewater goby – and it is, but it’s more because the story of the new tidewater goby exhibit is tied to Brenton Spies. Brenton is very lucky to be one of the few people on this planet to work with the tidewater goby. I am very proud of this man and the work he is doing. Long gone are the days of wrecking racecars. Now he spends his time mucking through the marshes and lagoons of California, studying and protecting the tidewater goby.

The tidewater goby, Eucyclogobius newberryi, is a federally endangered species. It is a tiny bottom-dwelling fish that lives in marshes and lagoons, in the creeks and estuaries of California.  It feeds mainly on super tiny animals, like mysid shrimp, amphipods and aquatic insect larvae — baby bugs. This goby is an important source of food to many shore birds, the southern steelhead and the ever important California halibut. It is an important player in the complex food web of our estuaries and it is endangered. They are pretty cute, measuring about two inches long. But they are pretty tough.

Tidewater gobies have been found in extreme water salinities ranging from 0-42 ppt. They can also deal with huge temperature changes from the “burrrr…. I’m turning blue” 46F to the “meet me at the poolside lounge” of 87F. They even survive in natural pools with super low oxygen levels! Yet, as mighty as these tiny fish are, they cannot survive the intense pressures and impacts of the human species. The tidewater goby has been severely impacted as a result of coastal development, the degradation of its habitat and the alteration of naturally occurring water flows. 

As for Brenton Spies, I am thrilled to be working with him again. With the support of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium has the pleasure of exhibiting the tidewater goby. I hope that over the next few years this partnership will flourish, and that the work of Brenton and Heal the Bay will support public education about this special little fish and increased restoration for its habitats. I invite you to all come visit and be sure to see the gobies in the Dorothy Green Room.

We extend a giant thank you to everyone who turned out to help officially launch our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium’s Dorothy Green Room at the January 18^th grand opening party. It was a huge success; by the end of the day, 2116 visitors had come through the doors. Thanks first goes to Cirque du Soleil for generously providing free admission for the launch of the exhibit, which was created by Cinnabar’s Los Angeles team.

In addition to the amazing new Watershed Exhibit in the Green Room, visitors were treated to time with a screech owl, a red tailed hawk, assorted reptiles and an opossum, all visiting courtesy of the folks from Inside the Outdoors of Orange County.  

Gary Bucciarelli of UCLA’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology brought his California newts and shared a wealth of information about this native species. Kids of all ages made amazing, imaginative crafts thanks to Viki Stathopoulos with Trash for Teaching and Spontaneous Creations.

We appreciated seeing so many special guests, members of the community, local and state officials, and long-time Aquarium supporters.  

A special thanks to state Sen. Ted Lieu for sending us an official proclamation for the launch, presented by Jennifer Zivkovic. We were thrilled to have Dorothy’s granddaughter, Tara Green, help with the official ribbon cutting to commemorate the day.

And last but far from least, notes of appreciation go to our funders who made the redesign of the Dorothy Green Room possible: the Annenberg Foundation and the state’s storm water grant program supported by Proposition 84. Our partnership with Cirque du Soleil continues in February, with their sponsorship of free Fridays at the Aquarium.

Back by popular demand, for a limited time only during the holiday season, Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is offering its wolf-eel for adoption. Nine different marine animals on display at the Aquarium are available for adoption year-long through the Aquadoption program, but the wolf-eel is only available through January 1, 2014.

Nothing says the holidays like a wolf-eel, and because the Aquarium staff does all the work of taking care of this unique marine animal, it’s a hassle-free way to connect with the sea life of the Santa Monica Bay.

At nearly three-feet long, the young wolf-eel is neither wolf nor eel, but a member of the wolffish family (named for their large front teeth) and will grow to be about seven feet long. This fish is eel-shaped, with a grayish-indigo colored body patterned with gorgeous dark spots. The wolf-eel can be found peering out of a rocky outcropping in the Aquarium’s Kelp Forest exhibit.

Halloween always goes by too quickly for kids. There’s all that time deciding what you want to be, then there’s assembling the costume and all for one night of trick-or-treating. It’s enough to make a goblin grumpy.

Cheer up! The staff at our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium wants to prolong the holiday too. The second annual Santa Monica Pier Halloween Parade is the perfect opportunity for all creepy creatures to practice their trick-or-treating skills. Bring a costume (check out the City of Santa Monica’s Costume Swap for a fun way to trade in your costume from last year into something new)– or make one at the Aquarium’s Halloween/Dia de los Muertos craft station before the parade. We’ll distribute reusable trick–or-treat bags (as long as supplies last) and little monsters can decorate the bags and be ready to step off in front of the Aquarium at 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 26.

You can bet your cauldron we’ll have a few colorful sea creatures to lead the parade up on the Pier, where local businesses plan to be ready with treats!

Need costume inspiration? Check out our ocean-themed Halloween Pinterest board!

Aquarium volunteer Audree Fowler will mark her 80th birthday on Monday, Oct. 7. The following information appeared in a volunteer newsletter several years ago, but her remarkable career bears celebrating again.

Google Audree Fowler, long-time Santa Monica Pier Aquarium volunteer, and scores of entries appear. Want to delve into the world of protein sequencing? This retired UCLA biochemist’s published works are available. The annual selection of the Audree Fowler Fellows in Protein Science (recipients of the fellowship she endowed at UCLA’s Molecular Biology Institute) shows up too. And then there’s the reference to Scottish country dancing.

“Scottish country dancing was my hobby for 30 years,” Audree explains. “I finally stopped six years ago, but [the dancing] took me to Edinburg to summer school as well as to Victoria to dance. I still have many friends from that time.”

Wednesdays wouldn’t be the same without Audree, who has volunteered at the Aquarium since 1999, when she retired as the director of UCLA’s Molecular Biology Institute. She’s logged 1,866 volunteer hours, and a few years back was awarded a Heal the Bay “SuperHealer” award. While Audree is also a docent at the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica, she is ever the ambassador for the Aquarium; one August evening she rented the Aquarium to introduce the marine center to a group of Annenberg docents.

Born in Los Angeles and raised on a farm in Long Beach, Audree says she’s been at UCLA “forever.” She was a trailblazer for women in science: Audree earned her bachelors degree in chemistry in1956 and went on to earn a Ph.D in the nearly all-male biochemistry division in 1963. “There was one gal ahead of me in the program and one behind me, and we three were it. Today, women make up at least half of the students coming through graduate level science programs.”

Audree’s passion for travel has led her to embark on many UCLA alumni trips, on Elderhostel tours around the globe, and she continues to travel to conferences for the many science-based associations to which she belongs. If she misses a couple of Wednesdays at the Aquarium, staff knows when she returns it will be with an assortment of pens and pencils to share and she’ll be sporting some crazy new socks that tie in to her travels.

Happy Birthday, Audree!

Want to join Audree as a volunteer at the Aquarium? Learn how you can get involved.

In honor of National Sarcastic Fringehead Day on October 30, we’ve made the sarcastic fringehead available for adoption for a limited time through the end of October. Don’t miss an opportunity to contribute to this unusual fish’s care. The Aquadoption also includes a yearlong membership to Heal the Bay and free family admission to our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium for the year. Learn more about this species below, from guest blogger Jenna Segal, the Aquarium’s volunteer coordinator.

One of our favorite creatures here at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is the sarcastic fringehead (Neoclinus blanchardi). This is a type of fish usually found in rocky reef and kelp forest habitats. Fringeheads range from Northern California down to central Baja California, and usually reach a size of 30.5 cm (12 in). Their diet consists primarily of crustaceans, octopuses, crabs and shrimp. Neoclinus are solitary and very territorial. They like to live in a small shelter, and have been found in a variety of habitats ranging from shells, rock crevices, worm tubes and beer bottles.

When another sarcastic fringehead starts encroaching on an individual fringehead’s territory, they will wrestle one another by opening their mouths wide and aggressively pressing them together–this determines which fish is bigger and therefore more dominant. During reproduction, females will lay eggs in holes, shells, rocks, etc. but the males guard the nest. Our juvenile fringehead is currently on exhibit in the Jewel Tanks found in the Kids’ Corner section of the Aquarium, and a larger fringehead can be found in a turban snail shell, across the gallery in the Sandy Bottom Exhibit.