When it opened two decades ago, the Monterey Bay Aquarium brought ocean creatures and their habitat closer to visitors than any other aquarium ever had. Now, the aquarium is aiming to turn it's visitors into stewards of the sea.
When it opened two decades ago, the Monterey Bay Aquarium brought ocean creatures and their habitat closer to visitors than any other aquarium ever had. Now, the aquarium is aiming to turn it's visitors into stewards of the sea.
The aquarium has transformed its popular Near Shore exhibit into the Ocean's Edge, a high-tech, interactive, family-oriented space that immerses visitors in the ocean -- without getting anything but their hands wet.
The exhibits, which opened Friday, include:
-- A Wave Crash exhibit in which you can sense the power of the sea from the safety of a vaulted acrylic walk-through.
-- Two giant octopuses, whose stage is a 30-foot double-tank exhibit.
-- Below the Wharf, its posts and beams recycled from an abandoned Portland pier, where you can learn about such critters as gribbles and shipworms.
-- An expanded aviary that now includes the new bat ray pool.
-- A touch pool as wiggly-looking as a piece of string, so families can bunch together and guides needn't yell from across the pool.
-- Quotations scattered about the walls, bringing visitors the wisdom of Pablo Neruda, Rachel Carson and Ringo Starr.
One of the most popular features is likely to be the Real-Cost Cafe, a video diner not to be confused with the aquarium's actual eateries, the Portola Cafe and Restaurant.
Inside, you perch on a diner stool and choose your meal from the interactive electronic menu. On a pair of nearly life-size video screens, actors playing Chef, Waiter and Waitress let you know what they think of your choices, and why.
Shrimp? About a quarter of every net is "by-catch," or other animals, which will be wasted. Farm-raised salmon? Uh-oh -- those holding pens can spread parasites and disease to wild salmon. Pacific halibut? Good choice -- the bottom longlines used to catch halibut cause little habitat damage and avoid by-catch.
The Ocean's Edge exhibits replace what, for its time in the mid-1980s, was a convention-shattering Near Shore exhibit -- the round tanks where anchovies swirled, the seabirds imprinting the sands of the aviary "beach," the world's only indoor kelp forest.
But since it opened, the wildly successful aquarium has regularly reinvented itself. It doubled in size and added the world's largest indoor tank a dozen years after its launch. Last year it paid tribute -- with a permanent exhibit -- to the Hovden Cannery, packer of Portola brand sardines, the original occupant of the aquarium site and model for its look.
So the Near Shore's time had come, too. "Nothing was broken," said Jacqueline Tomulonis, senior exhibitions developer. "It had a nice rhythm and flow. But some areas were hard to find."
When it reopened as the Ocean's Edge after a nine-month reconstruction, the galleries not only embodied advances in technology. They were also a refinement of the aquarium's philosophy, a mission statement pared down from an original 23 words to just five:
"Inspire conservation of the oceans."
The technology, the art and of course the dazzling creatures themselves -- all these, officials hope, will coalesce to transform passive observers into active conservationists.
Monterey Bay Aquarium is at the forefront of the movement to use attractions as instructive and even political devices.
Just as the Real-Cost Cafe lobbies visitors to eat sustainably, the aquarium's new Center for the Future of the Oceans lobbies government leaders to do right by the seven seas. But Monterey is not alone in taking that stance.
"That reflects the changing world of aquariums, and it's arguably what our public are looking for as well," said Chris Andrews, the new director of San Francisco's Steinhart Aquarium (currently being rebuilt) and a veteran of major aquariums in Charleston, S.C., Baltimore and London. "I think the public are looking for someone to lead a charge on ocean conservation."
The fact is, said Julie Packard, Monterey Bay Aquarium's founder and executive director, "No matter where you live, your life depends on the ocean."
But how does that message translate into entertainment?
In part, it's easy. "We're lucky," said Andrea McCann, a designer at the aquarium, "in that the animals themselves have always taken care of the entertainment part. They're cool."
Indeed, two of the coolest performers are the pair of giant octopuses, whose double-tank is lipped at the top with artificial turf to keep them from wandering at night. "They're really intelligent creatures," Tomulonis said.
The octopus exhibit will be adorned by an impressive example of how art and science mingle: an amazingly detailed life-size bronze octopus tentacle draped over the railing. The sculpture is the work of Amy Herbig, and it's one of about 230 such works representing about 75 species of animals and plants that are scattered around the Ocean's Edge galleries.
The inspiration for visitors to become conservationists comes from what Packard calls "Oh, wow!" exhibits. They needn't be as gigantic as the kelp forest or as popular as the octopuses and otters, but they do need to capture visitors who may never have glimpsed the life that lies below the surface.
During a study of visitor behavior in the Near Shore galleries, "We literally had a woman, she came in the front door, went straight to the sand-dollar tank, stood there for 15 minutes, turned around and walked out," recalled Tomulonis. "Clearly that was a meaningful relationship."
Indeed, the new galleries are all about interacting -- with the exhibits, the graphics, the guides. The graphics are in English and Spanish, and the videos are close-captioned in those languages. (Hispanics make up 15 to 16 percent of the annual visitors, Tomulonis said. The aquarium hopes to boost that to at least 25 percent.)
The ultimate goal is to "empower people to take action," Packard said.
"That's why, over the past few years, we've been initiating programs like our Seafood Watch wallet card," which divides seafood into species that are being sustainably caught or raised (Dungeness crab, pole-caught tuna) and those that are not (trawl-caught rockfish, imported swordfish).
"Science will explain what we need to do," said Steinhart Aquarium's Andrews, quoting an old maxim, "but it's our emotions that will help us understand why." And that, he said, "is what Monterey does very, very well. It basically touches people's emotions."
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Source: Knight Ridder/tribune Business News
