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I’m still a sucker for a lot of things that I liked as a kid. Disney, amusement parks, stuff like that. I also really like places where you can see other living things that you see normally — such as zoos or aquariums. I never grew out of it.
So I was excited to visit the Morro Bay Aquarium to see if that same little-kid feeling came back.
For a small aquarium, it was still pretty cool. All the animals are in one story of a building, but they have a great variety that includes eels, a leopard shark, an octopus and even a sheephead — which is probably one of the weirdest looking fish I’ve ever seen. The aquarium has mammals too: three sea lions and a harbor seal.
The Morro Bay Aquarium started in 1960 and is owned by Dean and Bertha Tyler. Dean helped build it, and later the same year, he bought the aquarium from the original owner, Bertha said.
Bertha and Dean were married in 1969 while Bertha was running a local restaurant. She said the aquarium didn’t do very well at first, but they sold her restaurant in 1973 , enlarged the gift shop and the aquarium started doing better. The couple had other sources of income and didn’t need the money from the aquarium, but they “wanted it like a hobby,” Bertha said.
However, the Morro Bay Aquarium wasn’t always just about offering people a chance to see cool sea life. It was also the place where injured and abandoned mammals in the area were rehabilitated — the only rehabilitation center in the area in the ’70s and ’80s, according to Bertha.
Dean started rehabilitating animals when he took over the aquarium, and after the Tylers got married, Bertha jumped right in.
“He brought me a little harbor seal — and I wasn’t into it because I didn’t know anything about it — he said, ‘Here’s a bottle. This is what you do,’” Bertha said.
Over the years, they rehabilitated approximately 100 animals, according to Bertha. Dean loved them, but Bertha said she wasn’t a fan at first — she liked cats and dogs. But once she worked at the aquarium full-time, that changed.
She said she ended up loving them just like Dean — she even taught one otter how to use the toilet. That’s dedication. When animals the Tylers took in were released back into the wild, Bertha didn’t go along — it was too sad for her to say goodbye.
The Tylers stopped rehabilitating mammals 17 years ago, but they still have one 25-year-old sea lion named Maggie. They’ve been caring for her since she was six months old. Maggie can’t be released back into the wild because she wouldn’t make it on her own, Bertha said.
The mammals the aquarium has now are pretty entertaining to watch — and visitors can feed them if they want. Along with Maggie, the other two sea lions are Ramses and Hera, and the harbor seal is named Smokey. The Tylers bought those three mammals from Sea World.
After visiting the mammals, you can go around the corner to the next room and see the tanks with the rest of the sea life.
I always get fascinated watching sea animals — they seem so completely different it almost feels like looking at something from another world. If I were braver (and a better swimmer), I might have tried being a marine biologist, I think.
Behind the tanks, there is a glass case that serves as a little museum, with some really unusual preserved items given to the aquarium throughout the years including whale eyes, a shark jaw and even an actual great white shark that was caught locally.
People enjoy the Morro Bay Aquarium because it’s smaller and more personal, Bertha said — they can get up close to the animals. They also like the admission prices, she said (they’re pretty awesome — $2 for adults, $1 for kids aged 5 to 12 and 5 and under are free). They’ve had as many as 2,000 people come through a day during the summer. In 1984, the aquarium became a nonprofit, and all donations now go to taking care of the animals.
“You can see how much fun they have,” Bertha said. “People have a lot of fun, even old people, they come and they’re really, you know, down or something. Then they come in and feed the seals, and they’re laughing out loud.”
Dean told me they get generations of people coming back to the aquarium. He said there was once four generations of a family there together a few years ago — it gave him goosebumps.
And Bertha said they want the aquarium to keep going after them.
“We want it to continue, even if we don’t sell it … we want an aquarium here,” Bertha said. “Because it’s been so good for us, it’s really good that you can get up and go to work and do something that’s not about money. … Money isn’t everything.”
It might not exactly be the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but it’s still a neat place. So if you like ocean animals (or if you want to be cheered up by some friendly sea lions), look no further than Morro Bay.