About
Education Programs at Pacific Marine Mammal Center include live chats, videos, and presentations that educate groups about the center’s mission. The program offers hands-on, interactive experiences exploring whale anatomy, marine mammal artifacts, and human impacts on the ocean, including the use of a life-size inflatable gray whale named Winston. Some programs take kids behind the scenes with the animal care team and explore the research that keeps marine mammals thriving, and they may also include a Plastic Free July challenge to reduce and replace single-use plastic items.
Pacific Marine Mammal Center began as Friends of the Sea Lion in 1971. It operates as a nonprofit marine mammal teaching hospital with a focus on rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing marine mammals. The center investigates deceased stranded marine mammals as indicators of ocean, climate, and human health, and offers distance learning programs about the rescue and rehabilitation of seal and sea lion patients, as well as community outreach where instructors bring marine mammal education to groups and summer programs for future marine biologists and ocean stewards. Pacific Marine Mammal Center’s mission is to inspire ocean stewardship and conservation through rescue, rehabilitation, research, and education. It is the only stranding center in Orange County, California authorized under the Marine Mammal Protection Act through a stranding agreement issued by NOAA Fisheries to rescue and respond to live stranded, sick, injured, out of habitat, or entangled sea lions, seals, dolphins, whales, and sea turtles, and it shares marine mammal rehabilitation responsibilities with six other centers along California’s coastline as a West Coast Region Stranding Network Partner of the national Marine Mammal Health & Stranding Response Program. The organization’s leadership team includes Jim Stauffer, John Cunningham, Dr. Rose Ekeberg, and Dr. Rod La Shell, and its facility includes a barn that functions as the rehabilitation hub and a planned water reclamation system that will save the community 15,000 gallons of water every day.
Last updated August 1, 2026.
Pacific Marine Mammal Center began as Friends of the Sea Lion in 1971. It operates as a nonprofit marine mammal teaching hospital with a focus on rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing marine mammals. The center investigates deceased stranded marine mammals as indicators of ocean, climate, and human health, and offers distance learning programs about the rescue and rehabilitation of seal and sea lion patients, as well as community outreach where instructors bring marine mammal education to groups and summer programs for future marine biologists and ocean stewards. Pacific Marine Mammal Center’s mission is to inspire ocean stewardship and conservation through rescue, rehabilitation, research, and education. It is the only stranding center in Orange County, California authorized under the Marine Mammal Protection Act through a stranding agreement issued by NOAA Fisheries to rescue and respond to live stranded, sick, injured, out of habitat, or entangled sea lions, seals, dolphins, whales, and sea turtles, and it shares marine mammal rehabilitation responsibilities with six other centers along California’s coastline as a West Coast Region Stranding Network Partner of the national Marine Mammal Health & Stranding Response Program. The organization’s leadership team includes Jim Stauffer, John Cunningham, Dr. Rose Ekeberg, and Dr. Rod La Shell, and its facility includes a barn that functions as the rehabilitation hub and a planned water reclamation system that will save the community 15,000 gallons of water every day.
Last updated August 1, 2026.
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