This photo of the Ocean Aquarium in Hermosa Beach, California has me worried. They felt the need to add a sign that says “ALL ALIVE!” Are we supposed to deduce that other aquariums features animals that are dead? Or fake? Or that they’d recently killed all their marine life but now they’re all alive? Either way, I am very suspicious…

Susan says: “It was common for both small aquariums as well as large ones back then, to have some of their collection made up of painted plaster specimens. They would lure you in with advertisements to ‘come see the giant squid’ and the like, only to find out that was not a live specimen, but rather just a plaster one in a ‘frozen in time’ deep sea diorama. This one was open in the late 40s, but I think it was closed by the later 50s when the pier was going to be refurbished. They used to have a trained seal show in that enclosure behind the turn-stile/fence.”