Marine Science Institute

we came for the open house so entrance was free. this happens once a month.
it’s a very small center, maybe my expectations were too high. there was one area with some tiny sharks, some fish in tanks and sea stars, but nothing special. if you are by yourself, without any guidance you will be done in 2 minutes.
we happened to be there when there was an instructed tour for the girl scouts. we tagged along and that was helpful, cause the instructors did seem nice and knowledagble.
however if you come by yourself, and there is no one there to guide you, this is not the best place to go. very small and almost zero information available.

This place is great for kids birthdays, school outings, etc. Its a fantastic learning experience all while you and the kids are having fun. It is obviously located right on the water with a nice view of the Bay. Staff is courteous and knowledgeable. Highly recommended for parents looking for something other than bouncy houses or giant rats to entertain your kids and their friends on their birthday.

We came here for Earth Day and I never knew this place existed. Great place for toddler/​kids outing (I heard of this spot from Redtri). They have mini sharks and fish tanks for children.

My husband and I arranged to have some weekend fun with our grandchildren age 8, 6 and 5 at the Marine Science Institute. So far, we had two adventures with MSI: one at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito and the other one on the MSI research vessel. Both were a great success and we are planning to sign up for more. Coming up there are the low tide treasure hunt and the canoe paddle day! Tiff and all the other instructors are great at teaching and having the kids have fun at the same time. Thank you MSI!

Amazing instructors, age-​appropriate curriculum, and the hands on approach kept the kids engaged the entire time! One of the best field trips I’ve chaperoned!

This is a great institute. Tiff led our meetup group, more than 60 adults, and gave us invaluable information of the marine life as we walked around the Pillar Point Tidepool. She never tired of our questions «What’s this one». She pointed out interesting new life in the tide beds and gave us detailed information about each thing we saw. I learned a lot and really appreciate her help with our group. It was a really fun day and she helped to make it so. Thank you Tiff and MSI.

This is a great institute. Tiff led our meetup group, more than 60 adults, and gave us a brief of marine life and walked with us on the Pillar Point Tidepool for more than an hour. We find interesting things in the low tide ocean bed together and she told us the stories of each creature. I learned a lot and we really appreciate her help and this group.

MSI is a great gem in the bay! There are so many great things to say about this place, from Tiff the community outreach coordinator to all the incredibly talented, nice and knowledgeable staff aboard the ship teaching and sharing to the captains who know just where to take us to find big fish! Everyone that you come into contact with is enjoying their job and having a good time educating, leading, and working with the groups on board. In their spare time, I see the teachers pulling out plankton books, fish index books and researching and discussing because they love the little creatures that they find on a daily basis, too, and they want to be able to share more with the students.
Students have the opportunity to gather plankton and identify them, test the salinity of the water, temperature, specific gravity, ph level, study invertebrates — touch and identify them, physically participate in lowering the trawl and pulling it in — and YES, the faster you pull the more fish we will collect! I see the adults (chaperones, parents) eyes are generally as wide with wonder and enjoyment as the students.
I started volunteering as a fish data collector intern about 2 months ago and I consider my time onboard as 4 of the best hours of my week! It doesn’t get much better in my book to be out on the bay, witnessing students from elementary to college age having a GREAT time and participating in the pulling in of the trawl and measuring those sweet little and sometimes BIG fish that we catch. Yes, there are sharks, rays, skates, pipe fish, sanddabs, surf perch, sculpins, and many, many more creatures that become our friends for a short time before they are measured, counted, studied and returned to the bay.
MSI has summer camps for kids and I hope to get my grandchildren in the camps this summer. From witnessing first hand, I really don’t think there could be a more involved, fun, educational experience for them than to spend time on the bay with this great crew and staff at MSI.
Thank you all for a great experience! See you on the boat!

Hi Tiffany,
I am not sure who should receive this at your organization but I was fortunate enough to accompany the St. Nicholas 3^rd grade children on a field trip to MSI and I have been telling everyone it is the BEST field trip I have ever been on! I can’t imagine a better field trip. The kids were engaged, interacted, learned — just really wanted to say thank you for your superb program!

Took my classes here on a field trip this past May and they were very professional, friendly, and the service was impeccable. As a Title I school we got discounts and they were always willing to go the extra mile, giving me a lot of leeway with funding and timing of checks from my less-​than-​efficient district office. My students had a great time and they learned a lot. As an RSP, if I could, I would change a few things about their lesson plan to be more accommodating to my kiddos, but for the most part I think they did a good job. Highly recommended. If fundraising is a problem you can talk to them about it, but there are also a lot of grants out there!

Our son has attended camp at the Marine Science Institute for the last six Summers — he loves it and says, «This camp is great. The counselors are nice, the field trips are very fun, and the day on the boat (the Brownlee) is so much fun — I especially like the otter trawl.» The otter trawl is an onboard net which the counselors and children throw into the water off the back of the boat. The boat pulls the net along while it goes around the Bay. The campers and counselors lift the net out of the water after a while and get to see all sorts of marine life (like bat rays and leopard sharks!) which has safely been caught. The campers get to explore, measure, and then release the catch.
While the children are having fun on or by the water, the counselors are weaving marine science facts into their experience. Our son has learned about the water, plankton, fish and rays, the shore birds, etc. while developing a love for marine life — something on which our family hadn’t really focused before. I feel lucky that we have a camp like this in the Bay Area — the campers get go to places like the Farallones Marine Santuary and Pescadero State Beach, spend time on the MSI boat, get exposed to marine life/​science, be outside, and just have fun the whole time.
I highly recommend going to the Marine Science Institute for one of their events, or joining them on a day trip, or having your children attend the camp. Our son didn’t have a particular interest in marine science when he started — the camp just seemed special and different so we signed him up for it. The camp has given him the gift of a new interest, while being a very fun way to spend a week of his Summer. It is worth the 25 minute drive from our house for that week!

VERY UNHAPPY CAMPER!!!
We had heard great things about this place, but not nec. the camps. I now understand why. There are kids (counselors) leading the kids (campers) and they do a LOT of screaming at the campers during the day. They are kids and not parents, barely adults many of them so they have no clue as to how to deal with the ages of the children they are enrolling. I wish I had known. The communication is not good with the parents and the children/​campers do not have the rules (more importantly, the consequences) outlined for them. The kid counselors yell at them for being kids (at least the 4−7yr old range) and then deliver whatever blow they determine in the moment whether it makes sense to the child or not. It’s clearly not of importance to them. My child told of many kids «sent to the corner» or yelled at, and my husband and I witnessed many children being yelled at, screamed at, from a distance. The counselors need to be taught how to interact with the young children they are taking money from. THEY are the costomers! It is frustrating, and was a total disappointment. My child did not want to go back and begged us to not go! NOT the kind of thing you want to hear from your child, especially when paying for a SUMMER (ie: supposed to be FUN!) camp! Had high hopes… was copletely disappointed by lack of training, guidance and care for our tiniest of human beings. our children!

This place was super cool! We came for their Earth Day gathering and were super impressed. My 4 year old loved all the activities. I can see why people would be excited to enroll their children in their camps! The staff are kind and knowledgeable as well as patient and educated. I don’t think we will do camps here because it is just too far away but I can definitely see going again. Cool little discovery!

I just made reservations for my grandson’s birthday party here. It’s a great place with reasonable pricing. Kids love this place. I’m thinking about looking into a summer program here.

Fun!

$hit, this place is FREE (so long as you make reservations ahead of time for their Family Aquarium Spotlight Days on weekends) and right in the backyard of those who live in the Peninsula.
MSI is situated in a part of the bay on the other side of Redwood City (facing the ocean side) where folks wouldn’t normally expect such a cool non profit organization to exist, let alone offer its services to the public. This year marks their 40^th anniversary, and there is definitely a lot to celebrate and enjoy. Kudos to all the great research work they have done and to educate the community and young ones.
For the Aquarium Spotlight Days, it is very easy. Send an email per the links for a specific timeslot. Show up early and register at the table, then watch a 10+ minute presentation about the org and their noble mission.
After that, reward yourself (and the kids especially) to their marine life exhibits, where you can get up close to various sealife, some that came straight out of the tidepools. A few you can actually work with a volunteer to touch/​pet, such as flatfish, starfish, hermit crabs, smelt.
I have to say though, that Cantonese and Japanese lovers of seafood will probably have some $ordid thoughts going on, like
— hmmm… those flatfish are smooth and slimey when petting… remind me of hirame or karei, good for sashimi!
— awwww cute baby dungeoness crabs! When they grow older, they will be THIS yay big, and hmmmm R&G Lounge salt pepper crab sounds good in a few weeks… no, the ginger scallion… efff it, too mainstream, salted egg yolk batter crab is the way to go yo, better yet, drive to Yum’s Bistro and pick from 10 different preps of crab… should I special order the soy sauce garlic crab, or the new trend of «golden yellow crab» that’s butter and garlic? Indonesian style curry crab? Singaporean chili crab at Crab Landing or Shiok? Thanh Long, PPQ, Dungeoness Island? Chiu Chow cold crab? Duarte’s in Pescadero for that bomb ass yo crab cheese melt on sourdough? Whoops… oh yes cute baby crabs, how precious…
— little baby river crabs like the ones from the beach that are not dungeoness? Awww man they remind me of sawagani… :-o
— man, the smelt looks nothing like the icefish used in shirauo sushi, or the Cantonese «bak fan yu» (fishling, baby anchovies) stir fried with salt pepper goodness to be consumed with rice, like a poor man’s gourmet dinner… but the smelt does look like the kind used for «bak fan yu» at Silver House in San Mateo… also salt pepper, a little greasier, but you can swallow the bones too… oh man, I hella want some razor clams from the white board too…
— where’s the mantis prawn or «pissin’ shrimp»? I wanna pet some too.

My kids had a wonderful time at the summer camp here. My son was in the Ocean Explorers camp, and went on field trips to the beach and tide pools, my daughter was in the Plankton Pioneers (for younger kids) and had a lot of fun activities at the MSI site. They both had a chance to go out on the boat to explore the bay. It is one of the more expensive camps around, but I think you get what you pay for. Also, drop off and pick up can be a pain, I strongly recommend car pooling.

Here’s something you may not know. If you want to see fish, rays, crabs, sharks, shrimp, etc. or you just want to learn about sea life, you don’t always have to drive to an aquarium in Monterey or San Francisco. There’s a place you can go in Redwood City to get first-​hand experience.
The Marine Science institute (MSI) is a non-​profit organization with a straightforward mission: teaching kids (and adults) about the our estuary, the nearby ocean, and the environment. Offering classes, camps and school programs, the emphasis at MSI is hands-​on learning and investigation. For instance, kids are asked to help catch various bay creatures, to study them, discuss them, ask questions, and have a great time doing it. And of course, creatures that are caught are released back into the water. (But they do keep a small collection in tanks on shore for teaching purposes)
This is such a great resource! And so close. Unfortunately we have been lax in using MSI this year. Though both our kids attended marine camp here last summer (and loved it), this year we failed to get them in camp before our summer filled up.
Nevertheless, as members of MSI we do occasionally get invited to events here. The one we chose to attend recently was a quick tour of the bay on their ship, the Robert G. Brownlee. After we boarded the ship, the staff briefed everyone on safety and then allowed us to roam the ship and enjoy the view on deck (s). Kids were even allowed to steer the ship w/​supervision of the captain. Once we reached the middle of the bay, the kids gathered critters using several methods. They dragged a net to catch fish and rays (and one small leopard shark), they dropped a metal claw onto the muddy bottom, the contents of which was rinsed and filtered for worms, and crustaceans. They even took samples of water in which microscopic life could be seen under a microscope (displayed on a video screen).
The staff at MSI are phenomenal; Not only are they knowledgeable, but they are so good at working with the kids that it is a pleasure to behold. They have a great sense of fun and answer every question. At one point, the staff taught all the kids a silly game for remembering the sides on a ship: bow, stern, port, starboard; It was so effective the kids had these sides memorized in about 2 minutes. Pretty amazing.
We are already planning on signing up both our kids for marine camp next summer. We are even trying to figure out a way to get some of their more landlocked cousins to travel here and join them as well.

Possibly the best thing you can do to learn about the Estuary Area (because the Bay Area is not actually a Bay: P).
The AP environmental science class in a east bay high school where I teach was coming here to learn «in vivo» in the ecosystem and I was asked to be a teacher chaperon aka «self-​deputized» to throw any misbehaved kids overboard the research boat we were in.
Just south of the San Mateo Bridge, we did hydrology and test the temperature, density, and salinity of the San Francisco Bay at the top and bottom layers. We also scooped mud from the bottom of the Bay to discover what invasive species are down there. Moreover, we were able to fish sea creatures at all levels of the Bay to see what lives there.
On the way back to the shore, we talked about the trash in the Bay and how long it takes them to decompose (ugh, why are people still using plastic diapers (decompose around 500 years) and not recycling plastic bottles since they practically DO NOT decompose AT ALL unless unless you live for millions of years!?!)
Thanks to all the MSI guides (Sarah and Kerry?) for being so knowledgeable and helpful throughout the trip!
Interesting facts to take home:
— The shallowest part of the bay is around San Jose with depth of 3 meters (10 feet). The deepest part is around the GG bridge where the ocean meets the SF Bay.
— 70% of the oxygen we breathe are from the phytoplankton in the sea.
— 70% of the species in the Bay are invasive :(
— Bay Area was much larger before the Gold Rush when all the dug out debris was dumped into the Bay. :(

Big props to the MSI. I’ve been on two trips with them for Girl Scout days. For kids too young for the boat experience, they give a top-​notch educational program about shoreside critters. When you get old enough to go out on the bay and scoop up stuff from the bottom so you can catalog it, study it, touch it — how awesome is that? My only criticism is the kids got to do everything and there was nothing left for a lowly adult to do!
I’d love to do a birthday party here but they are on the expensive side.