Heal the Bay Volunteer Harvard Horiuchi, 71, squeegees water after the rain at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium on Wednesday, February 10, 2010. The original  squeegee was a long-handled, wooden-bladed tool fishermen used to scrape fish blood and scales from their boat deck, and to push water off the deck after it had been washed.

Members of Gabrielino High School's Interact Club spray water onto the Watershed Diorama during the 7th annual Day of Peace festival at the Santa Monica Pier on Sunday, September 20, 2009. The diorama, which was custom made for Heal the Bay by Andrew C. Aguilar, is designed for pollution education and to illustrate storm water runoff.

Children watch as the Swell Sharks get fed at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium (SMPA) during  Heal the Bay's  Ocean Appreciation Celebration on Sunday, Aug 9, 2009.

With about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface covered with water, the ocean plays an integral role in our lives in a myriad ways. Special presentations and activities illustrating the ocean’s affect on our lives - and our impact on the ocean was the focus of the weekend.

About the SMPA:
The Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is Heal the Bay’s marine education facility located beach-level, just below the Carousel, at the Santa Monica Pier. The Aquarium is open to the general public  and attracts more than 85,000 visitors per year. Since Heal the Bay acquired the Aquarium in 2003 from UCLA, more than 300,000 visitors have been welcomed during public hours and approximately 80,000 students have been educated during in-house education programs.

(top) Cap Woman Megan Kilroy, 17, President of Santa Monica High School's “Team Marine” talks to visitors during Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium annual Earth Weekend on Saturday, April 18, 2009. (above) Shirin Bhagwagar, 17, member of Santa Monica High School's “Team Marine” glues a bottle cap creating a mosaic shark during Earth Weekend at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

The Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is Heal the Bay’s marine education facility located beach-level, just below the Carousel, at the Santa Monica Pier. The Aquarium is open to the general public and attracts more than 85,000 visitors per year. Heal the Bay is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to making Southern California coastal waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay, safe, healthy and clean. They use research, education, community action and advocacy to pursue their mission.

Santa Monica Pier Aquarium volunteer, Caroline Gerstley, shows-off a Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita) at the Santa Monica Pier on Wednesday, February 4, 2009. The moon jelly range between 5-40 cm wide. They can be recognized by their delicate and exquisite coloration, often in patterns of spots and streaks. Their behavior depends on a number of external conditions, in particular, food supply. They swim by pulsations of the bell-shaped upper part of the animal. Swimming mostly functions to keep the animal at the surface of the water rather than to make progress through the water. They swim horizontally, keeping the bell near the surface at all times. This allows the tenticles to be spread over the largest possible area, in order to better catch food. The coronal muscle allows the animal to pulsate in order to move. Impulses to contract are sent by way of the subumbrellar nerve net and are nervous in origin. The moon jelly has rhopalial centers, which allow it to control the pulsations. As the oxygen rate in the water goes down, so too does the respiratory rate of the jellyfish.