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On tap will be traditional music, dance, crafts and stroytelling, environmental education programs and bilingual underwater presentations (with English and Spanish speaking divers) and, of course, ethnic food.
Aztec dancers, mariachi musicians and Mexican and Salvadoran folk dancers will perform in front of the Blue Cavern, the aquarium's tallest exhibit that is home to rays, leopard sharks, giant sea bass and other denizens of the deep.
A particular emphasis on the educational programs will be life in Mexico's Gulf of California. Marine experts from the gulf join a World Wildlife Fund conservationist who focuses on the region in sharing knowledge with aquarium visitors. A bilingual film on the region will be shown in Marine Life Theater.
Ways to help local marine habitat will also be presented.
At 1:45 p.m. Sunday, the aquarium will present its annual Hispanic Heritage Award to one of the gulf's marine experts, Antonio Resendiz, who has sought to protect sea turtles in the region.
A coupon worth a free child's admission for every paid adult admission can be downloaded at aquariumofpacific.org. Hours, address and ticket prices are available at the same site.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.