Exhibits at SBMM take you on a winding journey through two floors where you will learn about: Early Explorers, the Chumash, Whaling, History of the Waterfront, Commercial Diving and Technology, Commercial Fishing, The History of Oil in the Santa Barbara channel, Surfing, Navigation, Shipwrecks, Channel Island Ranching, Point Conception Lighthouse Lens, and Santa Barbara Lighthouse Women Keepers.
Interactive exhibits include: sustainable fishing in a kelp forest, raising a sail, sorting trash into world gyres, virtual sport fishing, tattoo parlor and virtual dive. SBMM inspires learning through these interactive exhibits.
Our Art Gallery is currently displaying photography by Ralph Clevenger, Face to Face with the Great Whites, through March, 2019.
Our newest exhibit is History of Oil in the Santa Barbara Channel. Oil has been a part of our maritime history for thousands of years. The Chumash utilized the natural seeps in our channel for their tomols and baskets, the world’s first offshore oil well stood off Summerland Beach, commercial diving technology flourished in Santa Barbara due to oil production, and the modern environmental movement grew out of the 1969 Oil Spill. Today oil affects every facet of our lives, even as we move towards renewable energy sources.
