Cabrillo Marine Aquarium

This site of the aquarium is designed to let people know about this fabulous park, located in San Pedro, CA, USA. This place is a very interesting and educational, with live exhibits of marine animals, and admission is free (charge for parking or park outside and walk in).

Click here to view photo's of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium (inside) and the park surrounding the museum, for beach goers and picnikers. Call (213) 548-7562 for more info on the museum.

The museum sponsors tidepool walks ($1, only when tide is lowest). On one of these, the lady leading the tour pointed out an overhanging rock in a tidepool and we saw lobsters also hiding among the rocks with their long feelers sticking out. I saw an octopus, reached my hand in to touch it. It grabbed my hand with several of its 8 legs, figured out I was too big to eat then scooted further into its cave. We saw bat stars, brittle stars, limpets and top shells among other animals.

Slide shows (about 10-15 minutes) go on daily at various times with various themes, worth seeing.

A touch tank is a hit with kids. You can touch but not pick up starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins... Pictures of the touch tank are on the photo page.

I have photo's of the museum on a separate page. I'm hoping it will attract people to visit the museum, buy something in the gift shop (beautiful books on sea creatures and sea theme jewelry), maybe go on a tidepool walk, picnic in the park and generally enjoy themselves. While the photos will give you a hint, due to lighting inside I could not take pictures of everything, in particular my attempt to photograph a jellyfish in a tank looked more like the sun due to reflection of the flash.

How to get to the Cabrillo Marine Museum & park:

take the 110 (Harbor freeway) S. till it ends, turn Left on Gaffey street, go south till you see a sign pointing to Left to Aquarium (just before it goes up the hill) on 22nd? street. Hang a right at the next sign (a couple blocks over to east) and go about a mile till you see the sign to make a left to park. Don't go left here unless you want to pay to park inside the park. (See parking below).

If you want to park outside, go a couple streets past the sign to the museum, turn Left and park on the street. Even the dead end streets here have a staircase down at the end to the park. They sometime block off the street in front of the entrance, so if parking outside avoid this. Don't park in anyone's driveway or they may turn your car into a toad.

Other nearby attractions are 'Friendship Park', two blocks NW. Last time we were there they had just been filming a hip-hop music video around the friendship bell (an ornate bell donated by San Pedro's sister city in Korea).

You can view whales from the whale museum just past the coast guard lighthouse out Palos Verde drive west about 5 miles. They are only there at certain seasons.

see http://www.rth.org for DDC info on hosting official web sites for charity science, educational, environmental, garden, museum non-profits if you would like to have your group get a free web page up to 1 meg.