LAKE ELSINORE: Sea life on display at Rice Canyon


It's a long way to the Pacific Ocean from Lake Elsinore, but first-graders at Rice Canyon Elementary School met some unique sea creatures when the mobile classroom from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach visited the campus this month.

On Feb. 16, first-grade students attended an hour-long assembly to learn about the ocean, its animals and their habitats. Next, the excited first-graders were invited to visit some marine animals in a special large truck featuring uncovered water tanks filled with exotic and colorful sea creatures.

"Who's going to touch a baby shark today? It's not going to bite you," first-grade teacher Diana Engels told the students as they peered into the tanks. Inside one tank were four baby swell sharks, each about eight inches to a foot long. The small sharks mostly rested in the water and were still. Some students were afraid to pet them, but many did, including Ashlee Viveros.

"It's like sandpaper!" she exclaimed, laughing loudly after touching one. "It's cool."

Almost immediately after Ashlee gave the shark a gentle touch, it woke up and started swimming around, coming up to the surface and swimming right up to the edges of the tank where several curious children grew excited by the shark's fluid movements.

"He's flying!" Ashlee squealed in delight.

Her mom, school volunteer Stacey Viveros, snapped some photos and marveled at the mobile aquarium and how much fun her daughter and the other children were having.

"She loves this. It's so awesome. This is a great experience for them," Ashlee's mom said.

Student Destinee Velazquez encouraged her friends to pet the animals as she checked out a hermit crab and said, "I touched its shell!"

Hailey Gamboa touched a sea urchin. "It's sticky!" she exclaimed.

Staci Wong, a senior education associate with the mobile aquarium, said the tanks contained three types of sea stars, two types of sea urchins, two types of sea anemones, the young swell sharks, sea snails, sea cucumbers, some hermit crabs in their shells and a California spiny lobster.

The animals are all found in the waters off Southern California or in the Pacific Ocean and sometimes they can be found in local tide pools, Wong said.

She said the aquarium in Long Beach often sends its mobile aquarium to schools as an educational tool that teaches children about marine life and Pacific Ocean habitats. Before the students visited the truck, Wong led a short assembly for the first-graders that taught them about sharks, humpback whales and elephant seals ---- all animals of the Pacific found in various regions from the Aleutian Islands to the tropics to the Southern California/Baja region.

"It's a great experience to see something local. A lot of kids don't get a chance to go out and if they do, they don't get the interpretation," Wong said.

The school's Parent Teacher Association covered the cost of bringing the aquarium to the school.


