By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

December 7 -- “Cool, cool, cool!”

That’s what six-year-old Savannah Rogers had to say about the recently re-opened Santa Monica Pier Aquarium as she worked her way around a “touching tank” filled with anemones that hugged her fingers, squishy sea cucumbers and scuttling hermit crabs.

Six-year-old Savannah Rogers peers into the touching tank. (Photos by Ann K. Williams)

Nearby, 2-year old Reyna squealed a delighted “Oh!” when she saw the tanks. She tried to dip her hands in the shark pool before being restrained by her tattooed cousin.

The kid-friendly steps to the tanks invite young visitors to explore the bay’s underwater denizens, while learning important lessons about their responsibility to keep the ocean clean and its inhabitants flourishing.

Aquarist Jose Bacallao poses next to some of his charges.

In the largest 200,000 gallon tank, the prize fish, an endangered sea bass, swam in and out of the native kelp, gathered by aquarist Jose Bacallao.

On loan from the Birch Aquarium run by La Jolla’s Scripps Institute, the bass is representative of a species that once teemed in Santa Monica’s waters, sometimes growing six to seven feet long as evidenced by old photos taken on the pier, according to Community Outreach Coordinator Randi Parent.

Bacallao’s job doesn’t stop with collecting kelp. He also collects examples of the more than 100 local species seen in the aquarium, monitors their care and health, and manages the exhibits.

Friday, he showed two interns the fine points of feeding a shy moray eel and octopus.

After teasing Bacallao, poking its tentacles in and out from under its rock, the octopus glommed onto the black plastic grabber holding its food. Bacallao had to coax the octopus onto his finger and wrap it around a pipe as it started biting him.

“How do these things survive in the wild,” one of the interns asked in exasperation.

With a lot of help, apparently. Visitors are encouraged to learn all they can to help Heal the Bay do its work “making Southern California coast waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay, safe, healthy and clean,” according to literature and the docents who educate aquarium visitors.

UCLA student Gabby Jimenez and Public Education Coordinator welcome visitors to the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

“We couldn’t run this place without our volunteers,” Parent said. Over 100 students and community members help out at the aquarium. Docents are given a six-class course in marine biology, and volunteers must be at least 15 years old and commit to a year of involvement.

Help for Heal the Bay’s aquarium doesn’t stop there. Grants and donations keep the facility running and the City’s Environmental Programs Division helps pay for operating costs.

Thanks to a new roof, courtesy of $285,000 from the City of Santa Monica and a grant to Heal the Bay from the California Coastal Conservancy, the refurbished aquarium was finished just in time to open for the holiday season.

Ogilvy and Maher's banners draw attention to the aquarium.

The airy new banners and signs outside, a gift from the international advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, assure the uninitiated that they’ll be able to find the popular destination tucked under the entrance to pier, below the carousel.

The aquarium is now open Wednesday through Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday from 12:30 to 5 p.m.

Every “Shark Sunday,” the horn and swell sharks are fed at 3:30, and a presentation by a naturalist, shark films, and shark crafts round out the bill.

The aquarium will be closed from Saturday, December 23 through Monday, January 1 and will reopen from Tuesday through Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. The weekend hours will remain the same.

For more information, call (310) 393-6149 or see the aquarium’s website. http://www.healthebay.org/smpa/