On a sunny Thursday morning, a troop of young children excitedly dipped their hands into small fish tanks. They squealed as they ran their fingers over mussels and sea snails.
Six-year-old Diego Cortez’s favorite animal was the hermit crab.
“I like how the shell feels when you touch it,” he said with a bashful grin.
Cortez and his kindergarten classmates from Rosa Parks Elementary in City Heights — just a 15-minute walk away — were there to visit the Ocean Discovery Institute’s Living Lab.
For many of them, this was their first time at the facility. But it likely won’t be their last.
For nearly 20 years, the nonprofit has focused on a singular mission: connecting City Heights students – some of whom have never been to the beach – with hands-on experiences in natural science.
That work has won the organization a slew of awards. It’s also helped its leaders build a uniquely close relationship with San Diego Unified and lasting connections with the community they serve.
But despite the program’s resilience, federal budget cuts have already forced Ocean Discovery to reduce services.
‘What We Want to Be When We Grow Up’
When Ocean Discovery’s founder and Executive Director Shara Fisler was a young scientist and adjunct faculty and the University of San Diego, she had the opportunity to work with a program for first-generation college students. That experience changed her life.
“I realized I can make a much bigger difference creating opportunities in science for young people who don’t receive them than I could if I’m doing science myself,” Fisler said.
From there, Ocean Discovery was born. In the organization’s early days, Fisler and her team worked out of a kayak shack in Mission Bay. They ran summer camps where kids were taught the basics of science by exploring the coast, working with animals and learning about data. From the outset, the nonprofit focused on providing these programs to kids with the least. They quickly made connections with teachers who wanted to bring that kind of hands-on and accessible science education into schools.
But in 2008, about a decade after Ocean Discovery’s founding, Fisler said the nonprofit was trying to figure out “what we want to be when [we] grew up.”
That’s when they decided they needed a building that anchored them in a community. City Heights was a no brainer, Fisler said.
The neighborhood is one of the most diverse in San Diego – home to large immigrant communities. It’s also long been one of the poorest communities in the city.
“There we saw all of the challenges that our mission was working to tackle, but also all of the strengths in a community and that we could really build on those assets,” Fisler said.
Before long, the organization became laser focused on the 13 schools in San Diego Unified’s Hoover cluster. During the 2023-24 school year alone, they worked with 76 percent of the cluster’s students – more than 6,000. Most students make return trips to the facility year after year.
The nonprofit offers all sorts of free programs to kids in kindergarten through 12th grade. They range from in-person lessons about wetland conservation and climate change to research trips to Baja California to mentor opportunities from working scientists.
“People definitely misread the organization because the name is Ocean Discovery Institute. They think, ‘Oh, it’s like, playing with crabs, learning about fish – and it is partially that. But that’s really the gateway for our young people to learn what their abilities are and to begin to meet those abilities, particularly in the realm of science,” Fisler said.
‘A Jewel Right Here in City Heights’
Ocean Discovery’s impact on the community is evident from the moment you walk through the doors. Seated at the front desk is Jose Zuñiga, one of many former students or volunteers who now work at Ocean Discovery.
Zuñiga was first introduced to the program when he was a freshman at Hoover. He said the program creates such close ties, it feels almost like a fraternity.
“I feel like, as alumni, we have this burning flame inside of us. We know why we do what we do, how much of an impact this had and how important it is for this community,” Zuñiga said. “Coming back feels like a way to pay it forward.”
The nonprofit’s board also features several alumni.
Even some San Diego Unified teachers also have a personal connection to the program.
Linda Guerra-Adame, a Rosa Parks kindergarten teacher, has known about Ocean Discovery for twenty years. In those early days, she shuttled her sons all the way from south Chula Vista to attend events. Back then, she had to pay for classes, but her kids loved them, and the experience felt worth it.
Now that Ocean Discovery’s headquartered in City Heights, it’s having an even bigger impact, Guerra-Adame said. Despite growing up in San Diego, some of her students have never been to the beach. An even larger share would never have access to this kind of engaging science instruction if not for Ocean Discovery.
“This is a jewel right here in City Heights,” Guerra-Adame said.
San Diego Unified officials seem to share that sentiment. Over the years, the program has become such a valued part of the educational experience in the Hoover cluster that the district helped foot the bill for the 12,000-square-foot Living Lab, which opened in 2018. Officials allocated $10 million of Prop Z bond funds to the project – more than half of the facility’s $17 million price tag.
That arrangement raised some eyebrows when it was first announced, but Trustee Richard Barrera, who represents the Hoover cluster, said it’s been well worth it.
“I think of [Ocean Discovery] as an extension of the school experience for students in the Hoover cluster. And [Ocean Discovery] very much sees its responsibility as educating students in the Hoover cluster,” Barrera said. “It’s really the ideal way a school community-based partnership should work.”
Trump Budget Cuts Hit
Like many organizations across the country, in late April the nonprofit learned they were getting hit by President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to the Americorps program.
Those cuts eliminated 12 teaching fellow positions paid for by Americorps and functionally severed the nonprofit’s 26-year relationship with the program. The impact was immediate. Ocean Discovery has been able to maintain its school-day offerings, but they had to cancel after-school programs they’d offered for years. The nonprofit hopes a newly-launched donation campaign can help plug the hole and bring those programs back.
That Ocean Discovery was hit by cuts probably shouldn’t be a surprise. The program is not ideological, but at its core, the mission is the exact kind of diversity, equity and inclusion work that’s been relentlessly hammered in recent years.
Fisler doesn’t run from that reality. She began doing this kind of work long before the term DEI rose to prominence. And while it may be easy to attack the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion work, she said, it’s much more difficult to attack the specific work organizations like hers are doing.
Fisler hopes the uncertainty of this moment can inspire deeper conversations about why this work matters that don’t rely on buzzwords or political ideology.
“You have to look at society and say, ‘Yes, there have been and there are injustices. And that has resulted in things that are inequitable, and that inequity doesn’t serve individuals, and it doesn’t serve us as a country or community. So, we have to figure out how we tackle that in meaningful ways,” she said.
