Education & Camps

A lifetime of Learning

Education is a top priority of Heal the Bay. Whether you visit our public, marine education center on a school field trip, attend a free evening lecture on a marine science related topic, send your budding young scientist to our Micro Biologist classes or bring a group to one of our school year education programs, you will leave the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium with a new sense of wonder and appreciation for the amazing marine life of the Santa Monica Bay.

Getting Started

The Aquarium is a premier field trip destination for school groups and an educational resource for the entire Los Angeles region. Located at the historic Santa Monica Pier, with the Pacific Ocean just outside its doors, we exhibit more than 100 species of plant and animal life native to the Santa Monica Bay.

The moray eels that are the centerpiece of the Rocky Reef exhibit greet each student; touch tanks teeming with animals of the tide pools – sea stars and sea urchins, anemones and hermit crabs, snails and sea cucumbers, to name a few - invite hands-in-the-water exploration; the majestic sea jelly exhibit beckons from an interactive pollution exhibit.

Our marine science center uses every square inch to support Heal the Bay’s mission and engage, inform and inspire conservation and stewardship. Students learn how they can help keep Southern California’s coastal waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay, safe, healthy and clean.

Enlist for the Angler Outreach Team

Heal the Bay is looking for people to join our Angler Outreach Team! This group of dedicated people spends their days on local piers talking to fishermen about the importance of avoiding contaminated fish. The national EPA recently awarded the progra…
white croaker sign

Our Newest Fish Friend

Finescale Triggerfish The Finescale Triggerfish (Balistes polylepis) is the latest resident of the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium’s Beneath the Pier exhibit. Triggerfish are usually associated with tropical water, but their range stretches from San Fra…
finescale triggerfish

Kids, Fish and Fun

Editor’s note: Nick Fash is one of two teachers at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. He and colleague Aaron Kind educate as many as 600 students in a week. Nick chronicles a day in the life of an Aquarium education specialist.
Aquarium Classroom

On Our Radar: Earth Day

View all Earth Month events and updates.Heal the Bay celebrates each Earth Day in a big way -- by turning it into a whole month. For the entire month of April, we embody the catch phrase "Earth Day is every day." Our month is choc-full of great event…
Kids, Earth Month, Earth Day, Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

Washington Elementary Goes Camping

Washington Elementary, a Heal the Bay partner school in Compton, just sent its 4th graders camping. Thanks to  the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the students spent two nights at King Gillette Ranch in the Santa …
kids on trail

Wall Street Journal Poll on Plastic Bags

Take a minute to visit the Wall Street Journal and vote in today's poll on whether or not plastic bags should be banned. The accompanying article talks about the numerous cities in California that have banned bags, and whether this city-by-city appro…
Plastic bags

Teens Turning Green

The environmental movement appeals to people of all ages, from all walks of life. We each have important and very personal reasons for protecting the world around us. But young people, in particular, are poised to become the new face of the environme…
lips against lead

The Future is in Good Hands

That is, if Ethan Gauthier is any indication. The Sierra Madre teenager just won first prize in his school's science fair for a project he called Runaway Runoff. Basically, he took 4 samples of garden soil and added inorganic fertilizers to 3 of them…
Ethan Gauthier

Fight On, Samohi!

I’m a lifetime Bruin (birth, preschool, bachelor’s, Master’s, doctorate and currently teaching) so the title of this post doesn’t come easy.  I couldn’t bring myself to write “I Heart USC” because of the history:  Rodney Peete…
USC Trojan and horse

Beautiful Baleen

Vicki Wawerchak, director of the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, has been chronicling the process of readying a very special marine artifact for exhibit. Below is the fourth and final installment about the prepping of whale baleen. Previous installments…
Whale Baleen
Syndicate content