Coastal Science Campus

In 1972, Mrs. Marion Stowell Younger and her late husband, Donald, donated 40 acres of land to be used as a marine laboratory and natural reserve.

[2] The 40-acre (160,000 m2) site contains a relatively undisturbed wetlands, the Younger Lagoon Reserve, and flat terraces for the marine lab buildings.

[5] Shortly after discovery, biologists and students from UC Santa Cruz began "flensing" (removing flesh and blubber) from the whale, with the whole process taking about a month to complete.

Working with lab staff and specialists from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the California Academy of Science, they constructed a steel framework to support the bones and recreate the proper arch of the spine, a job completed in 1986.

During the original recovery process in 1979, some bones were lost to the tides, crushed under the 100-ton weight of the carcass, or stolen from the beach by souvenir hunters.

Seymour Marine Discovery Center, overlooking the Monterey Bay
A Sunflower seastar on exhibit at the Discovery Center
The Blue Whale skeleton outside the Long Marine Laboratory of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
House finch nesting in a whale vertebra.