Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was established in 1916 as the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Seven years later, the museum opened the doors to its current campus. In more than a century since its founding, the museum has expanded to include a collection of 3.5 million specimens ranging across every aspect of natural history. It includes birds, mammals, and marine life, anthropology, astronomy, geology, and paleontology. The museum is also home to the Central Coast's only planetarium.

In 1987, the museum built the Sea Center on Stearns Wharf. The Center's small aquarium and marine education facility enable audiences to have hands-on encounters with life from the Santa Barbara Channel and understand marine environments more thoroughly. In each of these elements, the museum is committed to highlighting the interrelationship between humans and nature. This often entails collaboration with other scientific, government, and for-profit organizations across disciplines.