Sixteenth century books and printing artifacts, moray eels swimming over your head and a big red caboose parked on a grassy lawn: It’s good to know that all of this is just minutes away from campus.

Most people don’t know it, but the South Bay is teeming with all sorts of museums filled with community culture and a low admission rate to boot.

Some students blame the museums’ obscurity on the lack of marketing.

“I didn’t know about these museums,” Deborah Dauda, 18, biology major, said. “It shows that things that really matter don’t get out there. If there was something about dance or hip hop, there would be fliers everywhere.”

Antiques and artifacts

Buried within the western reaches of Carson is the largest collection of printing presses and graphic arts equipment in the world.

At Ernest A. Lindner’s International Printing Museum on Torrance Boulevard, one can take a tour of the history of the printing press dating back from the 15th century.

Most of the museum’s presses are actual pieces of machinery from their day, and are all in working order, so printing and typecasting demonstrations are part of the tour.

Docents are well-informed and humorous and yield a wealth of fun facts.

The small museum is in the throes of expansion. Among its future endeavors include more exhibits and a printing studio.

“We’re opening up the studio to the general public so that the community can use the graphic pieces here and the printing equipment to bring them back to life again,” Museum actor and assistant Phil Soinski said.

Printing presses already for show at the museum are constantly rented out to the film industry, and have appeared in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” with John Wayne; episodes of “The Waltons'”and “Bonanza” and “Catch Me if You Can.” Most recently, one of the presses almost appeared in “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise.

“The press wound up on the cutting room floor, but, you see, we still got paid,” Soinski said.

Since the museum is non-profit, all funds earned from the rentals go into the museum’s educational programs.

One of the more unique programs is the “Dr. Franklin Show,” in which Benjamin Franklin comes out of the past to share his inventions and wit.

Franklin was a skilled printer in his time and used his expertise to publish his “Poor Richard’s Almanack” and a newspaper, “The Pennsylvania Gazette.”

Soinski plays Carson’s resident “Dr. Franklin.”

“We’ve got this electrostatic generator we developed and we crank it up and actually shock some people,” Soinski said. “It’s the greatest actor’s job you could ever ask for.”

The International Printing Museum is open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment during the week. Admission is $6 for students.

Exploring the deep sea

At the very tip of the Manhattan Beach Pier stands the Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium, a small yet exciting exhibit displaying local marine life.

The two-story aquarium is a non-profit organization that started in 1980.

The aquarium’s summer camps to Santa Cruz and Catalina Island, combined with the colorful interactive Kids’ Kelp Korner on the second floor, reflect the aquarium’s devotion to education.

However, not just youngsters can enjoy the sights to behold.

There are three touch pools dedicated to showing tidepool life. Anemones, starfish and a variety of rays, from the thornback ray to the bat ray, are open to the public’s curious fingers

To the side, a 3,500-gallon shark tank houses three different types of sharks, including leopard sharks.

On the way upstairs, visitors may pass through the Archway Tank, where moray eels, kelp fish and schooling fish make their way.

Once on the second floor, slimy, sticky sea hares await your arrival-and your fingertips.

Octopi, California spiny lobster and the Garibaldi, California’s state marine fish, are just a preview of the surprising different kinds of marine life kept on the upper floor of this tiny aquarium.

“I absolutely love it here,” Aquarium Volunteer Jamie Miller said. “It’s one of my favorite places. I really want to be an entrepreneur, so if I could own an aquarium, that would be nice.”

The Roundhouse Aquarium is open weekdays from 3 p.m. to sunset and on weekends from 10 a.m. to sunset. Admission is free.

A train ride to the past

From Manhattan Beach, head south to a train station produced in the replica of a real station in Wakefield, Mass.

The Lomita Railroad Museum is a site dedicated to the romantic period of the steam engine in the early 1900s.

With an actual Southern Pacific steam engine from 1902 and a Union Pacific caboose from 1910 bordering the premises, the museum is hard to miss.

The museum had its beginnings in 1966, when businesswoman and founder Irene Lewis opened it to the public.

Lewis was one of the few women who had an engineer’s license at the time, and during her lifetime, she assumed a male name and identity to earn her certification.

“I knew Mrs. Lewis. She was a great lady,” museum weekend manager Daniel Bryan said. “She got things done.”

The museum has done business with the film industry for its one-of-a-kind collection of miniature, working trains that Lewis built herself. One of its more famous patrons includes Walt Disney.

Visitors are free to hop aboard the locomotive and caboose to get a first-hand view of life atop the rails.

Across the street is a park annex flanked by two cargo cars, where one can relax and take in the spectacle.

“It’s pretty neat stuff,” Bryan said. “I used to come here when I was a kid.”

Inside the museum, authentic artifacts from railroad history is displayed, from vintage Amtrak menus, to ticket stubs and paperback novels that patrons could read to pass the time and replicas of phones from the era tucked in the steam agent’s office.

“The museum is kind of the crown jewel of Lomita,” Bryan said.

Though the museum has been around for almost 40 years, it hasn’t stopped developing and expanding its frontiers.

“We want to get some more cars, maybe some more buildings, do some after-school programs,” Bryan said.

The Lomita Railroad Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is $4 for adults.

Places to See

The International Printing Museum: (310)515-7166; printmuseum.org; $6 admission

Roundhouse Marines Studies Lab: (310)379-8177; mtr.org; FREE admission.

The Lomita Railroad Museum: (310)326-6255; lomita-rr.org. $4 admission.

Hermosa Beach Historical Society: (310)318-9421; hermosabeachhistoricalsociety.org. FREE admission.