Outside, an old sign with an octopus and sea lion beckons tourists to the Morro Bay Aquarium. Boisterous barking from within the concrete walls, chain link fences, and barbed wire of the aquarium grabs the attention of passersby.

Those who do venture into the aquarium and gift shop are greeted at the front door by windows plastered with bumper stickers both sassy and tacky.

"No Fat Chicks"—"More Whiskey and Fresh Hookers for My Men"—"It's not as BAD as it looks, it's WORSE," they cry out.

Once inside, visitors are barraged by a profusion of junk, from the two-cent variety to T-shirts and sweatshirts. A small selection of books is squeezed in among the trinkets.

Behind the cluttered sales counter a door leads to the aquarium. Above it is a sign welcoming visitors to the Morro Bay Aquarium and Marine Rehabilitation Center.

For $1 the door is opened.

Inside, the narrow concrete room is enclosed by chain link fencing on the top and half of a side wall. A sea lion snoozes in the sun, perched precariously on one of several shelf-like wooden planks lodged above the water.

Three small pools—about the size of one half of a tennis court and no more than 4 feet deep—make up the balance of the ocean mammals' living space. The other six harbor seals and sea lions swim endless circles within them, occasionally slipping through the hoops built into the chain link fences separating the tanks.

The animals are smart—they know when a visitor holds the 25-cent paper bag filled with chopped up dead fish sold at the window. If there is no fish to be had, the animals ignore a visitor. But if they spot someone complying with the "Feed the Seals" sign, the animals will perform any number of tricks to woo the fish from the human hands.

Sea lions, the more aggressive of the two types of pinniped, slap their flippers against the water, splashing spectators and barking loudly. They jump up from perch to perch to catch the fish, then slip their brown forms gracefully back into the cramped pools.

The shyer harbor seals, who have learned from the sea lions' antics, will gently tap the water for attention. But their hand-like front flippers are no match for the sea lions' broader ones in making waves.

In the corner, visitors can rinse the fishy residue off their hands in a giant clam water trough.

The tour continues at the back of the sea mammals' pen. Through a doorway visitors enter a darkened room with about a dozen small aquariums holding everything from octopi to horseshoe crabs to wolf eels. The decor is sparse inside the tanks—only concrete blocks adorn them.

Through the thick glass, warped with age, visitors watch the crabs dig futilely at the bottom, trying to bury themselves in non-existent sand.

Another tank houses a giant Pacific octopus. The bright red creature moves about slowly, furling and unfurling its 4-foot-long tentacles. It keeps its slitted eye trained on a quiet visitor, until two boisterous teenage girls interrupt the exchange.

They run up to the tank, gasp at the other-worldly creature, and tap the glass to catch its attention.

"I don't like you," says one of the girls, making a face.

The octopus, aware of the girls, tenses, then pumps its smooth, bulbous head up with water and grows 2-inch spikes at even intervals all over it. Once the girls leave, the spikes disappear.

The octopus pulls all its legs straight, pumps its head full of water once again, and then squirts it out to propel itself forward. It goes about a foot when it bumps into its glass prison. Deflated, it sinks back to the bottom of the tank.

On the way out, a sign says "Please Wipe Your Feet." Back in the gift shop, the light seems harsh and the aquarium seems far away.

***

The aquarium, built in 1960, has been owned by Dean and Bertha Tyler of Morro Bay since 1965. They bought their first sea lion from a trapper in Santa Barbara. The rest came in sick or injured and were nursed to health and put on display.

Although the rest of the waterfront is changing, the aquarium remains untouched. It stands as it did in the '60s, a bleak reminder of how far other aquariums and zoos have come since then.

But that may soon change.

The United States Department of Agriculture, which regulates conditions for animals on display, is putting increasing pressure on the Tylers to conform with federal laws which require more space for the marine mammals.

The Tylers have been given a deadline of July 11 to bring their facilities up to federal standards or close them, according to V. Wensley Coch, assistant sector supervisor for the Western Sector of Regulatory Enforcement and Animal Care, a branch of the U.S.D.A.

The aquarium's pools are not big enough or deep enough for the number of animals living in them, Coch said. In addition, the dry resting area, or "haul out" area, should equal the surface area of the pools.

"They'd have to deepen the pools, or get rid of some animals," to come into compliance, Coch said.

Because the aquarium predates any federal legislation regulating them, the Tylers have slipped through enforcement cracks. They did add a little haul-out space in 1984, but they are still short of the requirements.

However, the Tylers have been given an exemption on the haul-out space because they were able to come up with records showing their haul out space was approved once during an inspection.

Coch admits there is some confusion over what is expected from the Tylers. The U.S.D.A. transferred responsibility for aquariums from one agency to another a few years ago, and the federal government throws out all its paperwork every three years.

But they were given a clear warning in a Jan. 11 letter from Coch's office to expand their facilities in six months or explain why they haven't, Coch said.

"Money is not an excuse," she added.

If the Tylers do not respond to the U.S.D.A. request satisfactorily, the matter will go to court, according to Coch. But the process could take years and the aquarium will likely go unchanged in the meantime.

The Tylers may get exemptions from all the regulations. But the fact remains that the aquarium is outmoded and primitive.

"As far as I know, it's the only one (in the state) that's not in compliance," with current laws, Coch said.

***

"We're not in violation of anything," Bertha Tyler said last week during an interview in her office above the aquarium.

She dismissed the U.S.D.A.'s ultimatum, saying she had recently been told by U.S.D.A. inspectors that the aquarium met their requirements. (Coch disputed that statement, and said the inspectors' report, dated May 24, faulted the Tylers for a space deficiency).

Tyler, 69, sat among a myriad of papers, photos, and gift shop overstock. She searched through her files to find the old inspection reports which gave the aquarium a clean bill of health.

She and her husband have no plans to expand or renovate the aquarium, Tyler said.

"We have no place to go, unless we buy the place next door, and we don't have the money," she said.

The aquarium, which has a non-profit status, doesn't make much money, Tyler added.

Although Tyler appears genuinely concerned about the welfare of the animals in the aquarium, she doesn't seem to understand that times and laws have changed and so have the way most people view captive animals.

When asked if people ever react negatively to the aquarium, she said once in a while, out of thousands of visitors each month, somebody asks why the animals are kept in such a small place.

But she dismissed these people as "radicals" who do not represent the typical point of view. She also painted government officials who want her to stop taking in injured animals as mean-hearted.

The Tylers were told last July not to pick up any more injured or sick animals because they are at capacity.

Joe Cordero, who oversees the state's stranded marine mammal network for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the Tylers' permit to rescue marine mammals is being reviewed because they refuse to do any paperwork on the animals they pick up.

The couple must agree to cooperate with federal rules if they are to participate in the network, Cordero said, adding that the paperwork helps track trends among sick and injured animals.

"These animals, the paperwork doesn't help them," Tyler rebuts, contending that the paperwork only helps create more government jobs.

Tyler talked lovingly about the aquarium and the animals she and her 74-year-old husband have rescued. She proudly pointed to letters schoolchildren and their teachers had written after visiting the aquarium.

She said she once told a government official if he tried to jail her for rescuing animals, an army of schoolchildren would encircle the aquarium and keep the police out.

"I told him, 'That'll make a nice story,'" Tyler said.

***

The Tylers seem to know how to get good press. Despite the substandard conditions at the aquarium, rarely, if ever, is a bad word written about it in Morro Bay.

However, a city staff member told New Times that the Morro Bay Chamber of Commerce receives more complaints from tourists about the aquarium than anything else in the city.

Janice Keating of Modesto recently took her 4-year-old son to the aquarium. Her husband, Tim, an avid birdwatcher, chose Morro Bay for their vacation because of the wildlife viewing it offers.

Keating said they wandered into the aquarium, never expecting to see what they found.

"It was awful. The condition it's in was a shock," she said.

The aquarium was totally out of sync with the emphasis on natural beauty in the area, Keating added.

"There's wildlife everywhere (in Morro Bay), but in the aquarium the animals are treated like circus animals," she said.

Inside, the fish and other creatures were "listless and cramped," Keating said.

Her 4-year-old son, Colin, was terrified of the place.

"It was scary for him. (The sea lions) were too loud, and they were too close," she said.

A volunteer at the Chamber of Commerce was reading a complaint about the aquarium when New Times called last week. But another worker said complaints about the aquarium are few and far between. She said she finds it "hysterical that they complain" because she "loves the aquarium."

The attitude, overwhelmingly, is that nobody locally wants to say anything which might hurt a struggling mom-and-pop business run by good people. Especially a business which is perceived to promote tourism, a sacred cow on the Central Coast.

Even animal rights activists, who can typically be counted on to put animal rights before business interests, are lukewarm about the topic.

Linda Hall, a member of the Atascadero-based Action For Animal Rights, toured the aquarium at the request of a New Times reporter.

"If it's a rescue operation, great. And if it's just a zoo, I'm not too crazy about zoos," Hall said after her visit. "Zoos are just a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole."

But Hall said she was not a marine expert and she did not feel qualified to comment on the mammals' living conditions.

"I hate to say anything negative about a small business," she added.

However, she said, "It definitely needs a capital infusion, and if they don't have it, maybe they could get community donations."

***

Hall isn't the only one who would like to see the public step in and help upgrade the place.

Morro Bay Harbor Director Rick Algert, who negotiates lease sites on the Embarcadero, has initiated contacts at the staff level to look into the possibility of the city taking over the aquarium in a joint public/private venture.

In 10 years, lease sites covering the half block just north of the aquarium will come up for renegotiation.

Algert has hatched a scheme to completely renovate the aquarium and expand it onto the adjacent property. Hoping to strike a deal with the Tylers, Algert approached them several months ago with a casual proposal to test the waters.

The Tylers would get a reduced rent for the next 10 years in return for giving up their lease 15 years early. Their 50-year lease on the property expires in 2018.

Making the deal even more palatable is the fact that the lease site was recently reappraised and the rent doubled, going from about $5,000 to $10,000 a year.

Under his proposal, the Tylers would retire after their shortened lease ran out, and the city would take on the entire task of rebuilding the aquarium, Algert said.

"They have a discharge permit (from the Regional Water Quality Control Board) that you probably can't get again," making the site ideal, he added.

Algert contacted a consulting firm which worked on the Monterey Bay, Oregon Coast , and Waikiki aquariums, among others.

Sedway & Associates of San Francisco replied enthusiastically, promptly sending back a proposal for a feasibility study.

"We believe that natural science and environmental-related museums/preserves will enjoy a growing tourist market during the next several decades. Furthermore, this type of venture is an excellent tool for implementing local economic development goals by increasing tourism and thereby generating a new source of sales tax and transient occupancy tax revenue," according to a letter from Sedway & Associates.

But the Tylers have expressed no interest in the proposal, Algert said.

Their lease, one of the cheapest rents on the Embarcadero, could probably be sold for upwards of $100,000, he said, and that may be why they won't give it up.

"The rent is so under market," it would be worth some entrepeneur's money to buy the lease to lock in the low rent, Algert said.

While much of the Embarcadero is currently being renovated or rebuilt, the old aquarium is beginning to stick out like a sore thumb, he said.

"It's a really big problem for the city," Algert said.

***

An even bigger problem is what to do with the animals if the aquarium is shut down rather than renovated.

According to Coch, seals and sea lions are in fat supply and it would be difficult to place them if the aquarium is closed. The animals have been in captivity for so long they could not survive in the wild, she added.

Most likely, Coch said, the animals would probably have to be euthanized if the aquarium were no longer able to operate. Which is why government officials have been dragging their heels on forcing compliance.

That scenario calls up a larger question—why the animals were not released as soon as they were well.

The Tylers call the aquarium a "rehabilitation center," but their core group of display marine mammals are never released. They have even had three births in the aquarium, although only one lived to adulthood.

Animals born in captivity can never be released, so those pups did't even have a chance at freedom. The Tylers, who have been told not to breed the mammals any more, are planning on getting their three male sea lions fixed.

"Some of those animals [which might have been released] were sort of granted over to the aquarium for permanent display," said Dean Wilkinson, national marine stranding coordinator for the Office of Protected Resources in Washington, D.C.

"In the past, up until '85 or '86, we were not too stringent with requiring the release of animals," Wilkinson added.

Because aquariums were often allowed to keep the sick animals they nursed to health, no wild sea lions or harbor seals have been taken out of the wild for public display since 1976, he said.

But with the success of captive seal and sea lion breeding programs, there is no need to keep rehabilitated animals for display in aquariums any more, he said.

Wilkinson said his office is leaning toward even more stringent release requirements for "rehabilitation" centers such as the Morro Bay Aquarium.

***

Some people would say the animals at the Morro Bay Aquarium would be better off dead than living in conditions completely alien from their natural environment.

But Coch disagreed. Given the choice, most people would choose a sparse life over death, she said.

"Look at all those inmates on death row, fighting to stay alive." ∆