Aquarium Hosts 16th Annual Baja Splash Cultural Festival The Weekend Of September 23-24

September 10, 2017

In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month and Mexican Independence Day, the Aquarium of the Pacific will host its sixteenth annual Baja Splash Cultural Festival on Saturday and Sunday, September 23 and 24, 2017, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. This event will feature bilingual environmental educational programs, including films and underwater presentations with divers; and traditional dance, crafts, music, interactive children’s programs, and an award ceremony honoring Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho and Armando M. Jaramillo Legorreta for their dedicated commitment to ocean conservation and championing the vaquita—the world’s most endangered marine mammal, which is only found in Baja California, Mexico.

Latin American folk dance performances, Aztec dancers, mariachi musicians, and other entertainers will perform in front of the Aquarium’s tallest exhibit, the Honda Blue Cavern—home to giant sea bass, rays, and other inhabitants of local kelp forests. Guests can witness colorful dances from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and beyond. The Aquarium will feature interactive Central and South American music programs for all ages. There will also be children’s crafts and mural painting.

Baja Splash highlights Mexico’s Gulf of California, which is one of the most important wildlife havens in the world. Visitors can learn more about this important ecosystem, the threats it faces, and how people can help by exploring the Aquarium’s Gulf of California exhibition created with World Wildlife Fund Mexico. Through special bilingual programming during the festival, guests will receive an update about the vaquita, a porpoise found only in Baja’s upper Gulf of California.