NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:Backstage at the Bolsa Chica Conservancy

The Bolsa Chica Conservancy has come a long way since Vic and I ran it out of our back bedroom during its first years of operation in 1990 and 1991. Vic was the conservancy’s first executive director, and I was the research director.

Seventeen years later, the conservancy is all grown up. When Phil Smith was executive director in 1994, the conservancy moved from an office downtown over the police substation to its own building, a trailer at Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway. The building was meant to be temporary. Conservancy officials only expected to be there for five years, so they bought a 40-year-old refurbished trailer instead of a new one.

But five years came and went. And went again. Phil was replaced by Adrianne Morrison, who in turn was replaced by Grace Adams. There was still no permanent building. The roof and windows began to leak. The walls reeked of mold. Something needed to be done.

Steve Bone and Larry Brose came up with the idea of a golf tournament to raise money for a new building. They raised a lot of money. But with no place to build a new building, the conservancy board decided that the money would best be used in remodeling the old trailer.

An architect drew up plans. The old exhibits were removed. Walls, ceiling and floors were ripped out. New wiring went in, then new walls, ceiling and flooring went in. The place began to sparkle. And we can’t tell you how much better it smelled.

The final step was an upgrade to the exhibits. I stayed up late many a night working on the text for 12 interpretive panels. We wanted to cover plants, animals, marine invertebrates, the history of Bolsa Chica and the various past and present land uses. We found old maps and pored over Peter Knapp’s lovely photo collection.

Graphics artist Terry Houseworth had done a great job on the panels for the Shipley Nature Center, so the conservancy hired him to do their panels. Terry, Grace and I worked together to put photos with text. At times it seemed like it would never get done, but somehow Terry managed to pull it all together despite my missing deadline after deadline. The man is an artistic genius with the patience of Job.

The panels went up last Thursday. Or maybe it was Wednesday. The days were all kind of running together by then. Terry had “watercolorized” photos of Bolsa Chica for the tops and bottoms of the panels. You’ll just have to see them to see what wonderful works of art they are.

Laura Bandy and Dena Hawes went shopping at Michael’s craft store, bringing back a whole carload of artificial greenery and sphagnum moss. They cut, twisted, painted and tweaked, transforming the space around the panels into surprisingly realistic displays of life in the wetlands.

Dena painted artificial eggs to look like real tern eggs. She coated them with several layers of eggshell paint, then stippled them with brown spots. I thought they were the real thing. Dena and Laura finished off the displays with artificial lizards, snakes, frogs and birds painted to look like ones that live locally. A smattering of bones, bark and shed snake skins finished off the exhibit. I found myself looking more at the interesting greenery and the things hiding in them than at the panels.

The back room, which is used as a classroom, received a lot of attention, with new cabinetry, furs, mounted birds, and live snakes, crayfish, tadpoles and Western field mice.

But the highlight of the building renovation is the new marine aquarium. Karl Lang, son of conservancy board member Diana Lang, built stands for the new aquarium and the touch tank as an Eagle Scout project. Bob Adams and Laura Bandy researched what equipment was needed to run the aquarium and spent several days (and nights) unpacking parts and assembling them.

The tank was up and running by last Thursday. Or was it Wednesday? The days really did blend together in the mad rush to get the building ready for the grand opening on Monday, March 19. By Friday, the water had cleared, but there were still no critters in the tank. Two hapless teens from Huntington Beach High School walked into the building just to look around. Laura asked them if they were there to volunteer. They said no, but I ignored their response and said, “Great, come with me. We need to collect some inverts.”

The boys were good-natured and went with me to the public docks. They collected algae, mussels, tunicates and sponges, and we put them into the aquarium. Laura and Bob stocked it over the weekend with critters that Bob had been collecting and holding for us. Bob works at the Southern California Marine Institute. He brought bat stars, purple urchins, sea anemones, a round stingray, a sea cucumber, a turbot, a rockfish and a lizard fish. A kellet’s whelk laid eggs in the touch tank, and so did a nudibranch.

The many political dignitaries who came to honor the conservancy’s grand reopening presented proclamations, and REI and Simple Green presented big checks. These things are wonderful and important, but the crown to the ceremonies was the kids who came to enjoy the touch tank. That’s why we all worked so hard. We wanted to educate and excite kids of all ages about the wonders of Bolsa Chica’s wildlife — not just on Monday but well into the future.

It gives me goose bumps to think about the many people that we’ll be able to reach with these new educational materials and resources. Go see the new conservancy for yourself.