Monterey Bay Aquarium

If you and yours are interested observers of natural world phenomena--and if you want to see something truly astounding--don't miss "Jellies and Other Ocean Drifters," a new home video narrated by Leonard Nimoy and created by Sea Studios and the Monterey Bay Aquarium in collaboration with the Monterey Bay Research Institute.

What we wanted was silence and solitude. What we got was crowds and chaos. But even the din and press of hundreds of other visitors didn't lessen the impact of the new Outer Bay exhibit that opened last weekend at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We drove up on Friday, the day before the March 2 grand opening. Despite the almond trees in full bloom along sections of the highway, Interstate 5 is a dreary drive. We eagerly turned off on California 46, which would take us to Paso Robles and U.S. 101.

Ed Ricketts would hardly recognize the Cannery Row where more than half a century ago he studied sea creatures in his laboratory and drank cheap wine with author John Steinbeck. Practically next door to the aging shell of the late Ricketts' lab on Cannery Row is a formidable new wing of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, home to a spectacular exhibit of marine animals from Monterey's outer bay. Inside, large orange jellyfish float in water as blue as the deep ocean.

Sharks? In the desert? "Why not?" asks Ray Darnell, director of the Albuquerque Biological Park. "You're not going to see cheetahs roaming the Pacific, but you'll see them at the zoos in California. It's the same thing." Opening day is less than a year away for Albuquerque's $22-million Tingley Aquatic Park, the only major aquarium in a desert in the United States. It's part of a trend toward fishy attractions. Five years ago, there were only 17 major aquariums in the United States.

Kelp rises more than 20 feet from the sandy bottom, waving gracefully with the pulse of the sea. Sardines are merely a gray smudge in the water--until they turn and the dim light transforms them into a shimmering silver cloud. Sea otters play and snooze on the rocks nearby, as stilts look for worms in the damp sand between the reeds and the surf. Such realistic displays have made the Monterey Bay Aquarium a model since its opening a decade ago, and the 17.

April was sleeping in a shallow pool between two rocks when a little boy pointed down and shouted, "Look at that fish!" Another boy tried to correct him, calling April a seal. April would have none of that. She shot the boys a casual glance, rolled over as if to show the world that she was an otter, not a fish or a seal, and went back to sleep. The sun had finally burned through the fog, the gray mist giving way to the sparkling Pacific.

Tower Bridge, London's landmark drawbridge over the River Thames, has closed for at least three months to repair rusting steel girders under its two main towers. But it will remain open as a pedestrian walkway, and the drawbridge will continue to be open to allow boats to pass. Corrosion and the daily pounding of 40,000 vehicles have taken their toll on the 99-year-old bridge, originally designed for horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians.

The long drive winds through 90 acres of apricot trees and up to the top of the hill where David Packard lives alone. Inside his house, which can barely be seen from the road, the great industrialist sits rigidly in a straight-backed chair, dressed in a tweed jacket and coordinated slacks. He's a big man, a onetime three-sport athlete at Stanford. But he's 80 now, and as he shifts his 6-foot, 4-inch frame from one position to another, he moves cautiously.

A female seven-gill shark, believed to be the largest ever captured, has been taken to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where officials hope she will give birth. The 9-foot, 10-inch shark, weighing approximately 350 pounds, was caught at an undisclosed location "off the North Coast," aquarium Supervisor Scott Nygren said. Officials believe the shark, named Eve, is pregnant but they are apprehensive about conducting blood or ultrasound tests to confirm it.

Few baby sea otters are expected to survive the Alaskan oil spill, but two pups orphaned by the disaster are being raised at Monterey Bay Aquarium by humans, who don wet suits to swim with the young mammals and give them a tasty formula of mashed fish, clams and Half and Half. The aquarium is the only institution in the world that has raised sea otter pups successfully and the only one that has succeeded in releasing one out to the open ocean to live among its own kind. "We . . . knew how closely the pups bond to their mothers, and when we began acting as surrogates we worried at first that we couldn't break the bonds to us. So we tried to maintain as little human contact with the pups as possible," said Julie Hymer, who with David C. Powell heads the team of volunteers and professionals caring for the otters.