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Morro Bay

Visitor Program Center

Category:  Submerged, Intertidal, Wetland, and Upland

Cost:  $20,000 to install/set up; approximately $6,000 per year to operate

Description:  The MBNEP leases a small space (approximately 500 sq. ft.) adjacent to its offices and has set up a visitor information center. The center includes exhibits about the estuary, "stressors" on the estuary, and programs/projects underway to improve the health of the bay. Current exhibits include live fish tanks, photographic displays, scopes/binoculars for viewing birds and other wildlife on the bay and other similar educational materials. Future exhibits will include interpretive displays on ichthyoplankton (including microscopes with video cameras), tides and hydrodynamics, and benthic communities. Another project underway is a computerized "virtual tour" of the estuary. The visitor center is a work in progress and its content is evolving in response to audience. Community volunteers act as docents.

The project is successful; it provides a fun way to reach a broader audience and educate them about the importance of the estuary. The primary constraints are the initial costs for set up and ongoing costs of rent as well as coordination of docent services.

Outcome:  The visitor center has been open for only a few weeks as of this writing (January, 2001) and the MBNEP; we estimate over 1000 visitors to date and hundreds of new names on the MBNEP mailing list. Response from the community for docents has been so positive that we have more volunteers than time slots.

Contact:  Cheryl Lesinski, 805-772-3834; clesinski@mbnep.org

Citation:  http://www.mbnep.org