Aquarium Of The Pacific

It began like a bad dream from my childhood. Entering the Long Beach aquarium's newest exhibit, "Jellies: Phantoms of the Deep," I moved into a darkened room with ripples of light undulating on the floor as if I were under water, at the bottom of the pool. Before my eyes could adjust, there it was: My nemesis. A big gelatinous blob with stinging tentacles and way too much attitude. It froze me in my tracks.

The soothing, lava lamp-like motions of jellyfish are making the creatures popular additions to marine exhibits nationwide. But to children visiting the new jellyfish exhibit Friday at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, they were just plain weird-looking. "They look like pumpkins," said 5-year-old Karolyn Powell of Riverside. "Scary pumpkins." "They probably feel like jelly," said 8-year-old Evan Casaus of Montrose. "They look like bubbles and stuff," said Justin Hudson, 10, of Tucson.

Brook and Charlie arguably are as cute as Mickey Mouse, and when the California sea otters are frolicking in their tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific, they're athletic enough to give Shamu a run for the money. But while Disneyland and Sea World readily enlist their lovable mouse and killer whale to keep turnstiles spinning, the Long Beach aquarium is sticking with an advertising policy that prohibits marketers from turning its animals into advertising icons.

One of Frances Bond's first memories is being thrown into water. "I was 3 years old and my father tossed me into Lake Manitou [in Indiana]," recalled Bond, who will be 90 in February. "Instinctively, I began to dog paddle and swim." Bond has been throwing herself into water ever since, literally and figuratively. Her latest leap came in June when she signed up to become an educational volunteer at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, where she is its oldest volunteer.

The city of Long Beach has never evoked images of innocent pleasures. Its iconic power came as a symbol of America's industrial and military might. One thinks of shipping docks, naval yards, rowdy sailors--not a place to take the kids. The sea here has never seemed to be for play. The Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, which opened to the public this weekend, aims to change all that with one bold stroke.

The Lechugas of Whittier bounded through the doors of the new Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach like thousands of other visitors Saturday. The big tank of predator fish at the back of the foyer caught their attention right away, and the three older girls, Lexi, Kristen and Carisa, rushed right up to it. "I see the long fish with the black tail that's so skinny," said Kristen, the talkative one. "I think they're stingrays." Actually, they were giant sea bass.

At its official dedication Thursday, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific was saluted by officials as a symbolic link to the city's past and a $117-million cornerstone for its future. "What you are seeing is a departure from what we were to where we are going," Mayor Beverly O'Neill told a large group of local and national news reporters while standing in front of the aquarium's three-story predator tank. "This structure shows . . . that we have a vision for our future."

Even when you're surrounded by thousands of beautiful, exotic fish all day, there's still nothing quite like that mammal-to-mammal feeling. And no warmblooded vertebrates with hair know that feeling better than Jenny Theodorou and Debbie Prevratil. The pair are mammalogists at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, which opens Saturday. Ticket-buying land mammals can witness a heartwarming encounter between the handlers and their plucky sea mammals at least twice a day. Lugging buckets of herring and Icelandic capelins, the mammalogists will trot out in their calf-high black rubber boots and hand-feed the aquarium's seven California sea lions and harbor seals.