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This program is free to all participants due to generous financial support from the Norris Foundation and members of FRIENDS of CMA. Groups are asked to make reservations.
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium is located at 3720 Stephen White Drive in San Pedro and is a facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.
For additional information or for group reservations call 310-548-7562 or check the web site at www.cabrilloaq.org.
CMA Whale Fiesta — Jan. 12
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium will celebrate the 31st anniversary of the annual Whale Fiesta on Sunday, January 12, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
For the past 30 years, this fun-filled family event, co-sponsored by Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society, has been held in late spring to celebrate the completion of another successful whalewatching season. In a change from tradition, this year we will celebrate the winter beginning of whalewatch season as the Pacific Gray Whales migrate along the Southern California coast en route to Baja California.
Over 20 marine awareness organizations will provide information about their efforts. Throughout the day, whale experts will be presenting informal talks, slide shows, and lectures on various marine mammals in the Aquarium’s whale room and in the John M. Olguin Auditorium.
Special activities throughout the day will include face painting and various arts and crafts projects for children. There will be a puppet show and an inflated life-sized whale to crawl through. Try your hand at our zany “Great Duct Tape Whale Contest.” Judging and prizes will be at 3:00 p.m. You can also ring the bell and spout out your own verbal expression at our Whale Poets’ corner.
The Aquarium will be open to visitors from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Families are invited to bring lunches or purchase food items from vendors. There is no admission charge. There will be a complimentary park and ride service available at 22nd and Miner Streets (at the end of Harbor Blvd.).
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium is located at 3720 Stephen White Drive in San Pedro and is a facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.
For more information or to receive a calendar of events call (310) 548-7562 or visit the web site at www.cabrilloaq.org.
Avalon Harbor Underwater Cleanup — February 22
The 23rd Annual Avalon Harbor Underwater Cleanup will be held on Saturday, February 22, 2003.
Once a year, in conjunction with the Underwater Cleanup, the Avalon Harbor Department permits diving in Avalon harbor. This event, which is steeped in over 20 years of tradition, brings together 500 divers from California and other western states as well as many foreign countries.
In the morning, divers will scour the harbor searching for trash and debris which is removed and sorted by volunteers. Prizes and awards are given at the afternoon Award Ceremony at the Wrigley Stage in downtown Avalon. Awards given last year for trash recovered included Oldest, Most Useless, Most Valuable, Most Perverted, Best Dressed and the well-known Silver Tongue Award.
Registration can be accomplished either online from the Catalina Conservancy Divers (CCD) website (http://www.ccd.org) or by downloading the registration form from the CCD website and mailing it with a check.
Proceeds from the event go to support the work of the CCD and Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber. CCD is a support group of the Catalina Conservancy, which is dedicated to restoration and protection of Catalina Island and its surrounding waters. CCD has been conducting underwater monitoring projects around Catalina since 1992. The Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber is located at the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies near Two Harbors. The Chamber is the closest life support recompression chamber to the heavily dived Catalina area and has been responsible for saving many lives over the years.
All participants in the event will receive a T-shirt and be eligible for a door prize drawing. In addition to the door prize, numerous prizes totaling over $10,000 in value will be raffled off during the Awards Ceremony.
Catalina is located 22 miles from the LA/Orange County coast and can be reached by boat from Long Beach, San Pedro, Dana Point and Newport Beach and by helicopter. For information regarding transportation, hotel accommodations, activities, events or other services contact the Catalina Island Visitor’s Bureau at 310-510-1520. For questions regarding the event itself call 310-645-7900 or email turney@newcap.com.
John Chatterton to be Guest Speaker at CA Wreck Divers Banquet — February 22
“Hitler’s Lost U-Boat” will be among the topics that undersea explorer John Chatterton will present at the upcoming California Wreck Divers Annual Banquet to be held in February in Marina del Rey, California.
Chatterton, a commercial diver, scuba instructor, dive boat captain and member of the Explorers Club, discovered the wreck of an unidentified German U-Boat off the New Jersey coast in 1991. Following numerous exploratory dives and years of painstaking research, his team identified the lost submarine as the U-869. The endeavor corrected faulty war records and became the subject of a PBS television special.
Chatterton’s list of other discoveries and accomplishments is formidable. He was part of the first team of technical scuba divers to explorer the RMS Lusitania in 1994, and he discovered the first World War II casualty in American waters, the Norness. John also discovered the World War I tanker Sabstian, and the World War I passenger freighter SS Carolina, which was sunk by the German submarine U-151. Recently, he was a member of the British expedition to the HMHS Brittanic, a sister ship of the RMS Titanic, where he was the first individual to dive the wreck utilizing a rebreather.
The banquet will be held at the Harbor House Restaurant in Marina del Rey, California, at 5:30 P.M., February 22, 2003. The evening’s entertainment will include dinner and the California Wreck Divers’ famous “Giant Raffle.” For more information, call Steve Lawson at (949) 462-0462, or contact the California Wreck Divers’ web site at www.cawreckdivers.org.