CGNW Recommends: Marine Life Center

It’s located in the same building complex as the Port of Bellingham. You walk on weathered boardwalk, through spaces between buildings, until you glimpse, right on the edge of the water, a sign: the Marine Life Center.  The windows look right out onto the marina, showing the weather outside and the gray-green-blue of the ocean at the moment. The one-room space feels like a lean-to, with the canvas roofing flapping a bit in the January wind.  

What charmed me most about this small, rough-around-the-edges exhibit, were the multiple opportunities that kids would have to physically experience under-the-sea life. For me as an adult, it was a welcome 20-minute break in the middle of a workday, to do something in stark and fascinating contrast to my everyday office-based routine. 

In the ice-cold salt water of the Touch Tank, slimy, squidgy starfish wrap their thick arms around rough rocks. Small orange and blue crabs peek out of their shells, and other, less-easily-identifiable creatures lie along the bottom of the pool. A sign admonishes children to touch with just one finger - since these animals meet sometimes 400 guests in a day, they need to be treated gently. 

Other aquariums line the room, including one with an inset bubble-helmet-like viewing spot. It’s built for children to sit in and look at the fish and the aquarium from inside it. (Cooper managed to fold his 5’10” frame into the small space and get a glimpse too.) There’s also a small aquarium with green flower-like anemones waving under bubbling water. In the center of the room is an observation pool. It’s roped off with corded netting these days, keeping visitors back from the venomous creatures housed in its waters. 

On Saturdays, and other mornings by appointment, there are free kid-friendly classes on specific sea creatures and their habitats.

So this spring, as you’re on your way out to Zuanich to fly kites or play on the playground, stop in for a few minutes and let your kids interact with some of the real creatures that populate the ocean floor of Puget Sound. Marine Life Center: 1800 Roeder Avenue #100

Photo credit: Cooper Hansley