Orange County Marine Institute

After a six-month deadlock on the question of whether the Orange County Marine Institute should go private, the City Council this week deadlocked again on a proposal to let the voters decide the issue in November. The stalemate marked the seventh time in six months that council members have failed to take action on the institute's situation.

After nearly two hours of heated debate, the City Council voted Tuesday to end its participation in the Orange County Marine Institute joint powers agreement, helping to pave the way for the 18-year-old educational facility to go private.

The City Council today will consider a request to let voters decide in November whether the Orange County Marine Institute should be taken private. The council has tried to settle the issue several times but has deadlocked. The panel was to have decided the matter at its July 9 meeting, but members Judy Curreri and Harold R. Kaufman were absent, and Mayor Karen Lloreda abstained because her husband did carpentry work for the facility. The remaining two members did not constitute a quorum.

The Orange County Marine Institute, which regards itself as a school of higher learning for the ocean, announced Monday it has received its first $1-million donation. Pledged by an anonymous local philanthropist, the donation will allow the institute to begin designing a major expansion that could cost as much as $20 million.

The 12th annual Dana Point Tall Ships Festival was in danger of being scuttled this year until a corporate sponsor offered to replace $6,550 in city funding that the event had lost. Toshiba's copier and fax division committed the money this week after hearing that the festival, organized by the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point, might not happen.

A group of students learned the fishy facts of marine biology this week at a summer science program sponsored by the Orange County Marine Institute. The weeklong Marine Institute for Youths is a new program that provided 24 budding marine biologists age 12 to 15 intensive hands-on activities in marine science.

In the first study of its kind, a Dana Point research team has documented extensive harassment of California gray whales by recreational boaters who circle, chase and, in some cases, even try to get close enough to pet the mammals. The study, by the Orange County Marine Institute, said that in one instance, as many as 26 boats converged on a single whale, startling it into changing course and disrupting its migration.

The City Council, deadlocked over whether to allow the Orange County Marine Institute to shed its quasi-governmental status and become a private agency, no longer needs to approve the change and will not be asked to vote on the issue again, the institute's executive director said Friday. The institute consulted its attorney and was advised that the City Council's previous approval on a related matter, 10 months ago, is sufficient for the marine facility to proceed with expansion plans.

The mackerel lay open, its innards bared after a scissors-wielding student snipped a slit in its belly, and the instructor carefully peeled back its flesh. Moments later, at the urging of the instructor, another student carefully plucked out a shimmering, purple-red organ--the heart--with a tweezers, to a chorus of ewwwwwwwwws! from the captivated youths. Outside, students were yelling "Aye-aye, sir!"