Many people who visit California`s Monterey Peninsula solemnly resolve to make it their home. Those who never will must be satisfied to capture a portion of its soul-which is the mission, when all is said and done, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
It was opened in 1984 with a $55 million gift from David Packard, the founder of Hewlett-Packard Co. The aquarium was inspired by Packard and his family`s fascination with the sea. And, as he did with computers, Packard also did with aquariums. He struck a chord with the public. The new attraction drew 2.3 million visitors in its first year.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium justifiably enjoys a worldwide reputation. Its success has inspired many new aquariums, and its realistic marine habitats have influenced others, including the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
For most people who visit this living museum, the rest of the world melts away. Set between the steep ridges of the state`s coastal mountains and sea lions braying on rocks offshore, the Monterey Bay Aquarium focuses entirely on the waters outside its back door. That was enough. The Monterey Bay is known as one of the richest marine habitats in the world.
Remnants of the past
The neighborhood around it is Cannery Row, Monterey`s old seaport, which was chronicled in John Steinbeck`s novel of the same name. The district is now fully equipped for tourists with a taste for T-shirts and fudge, but a few reminders of the old days remain. One is the home and laboratory of Ed ”Doc” Ricketts-a marine biologist in the `20s and `30s. Ricketts occupied himself with the bay`s strange and various forms of life and wrote about a scientific idea that was then quite revolutionary, ”ecology.” His board and batten cottage is now a men`s club.
The aquarium also casts historic shadows. On its very site the Hovden Cannery opened in 1914, and quickly became the largest sardine processor in town. This industry flourished, with Italian fisherman using lampara nets from Sicily, and then peaked in the `40s when ”the silver harvest” began to vanish because of overfishing. Hovden closed in 1972 and sat empty until a group of marine biologists at the Hopkins Marine Station, on the rocks next door, imagined the hulk as an aquarium. Among them was Nancy Packard, David`s daughter, and her husband, Steven Burnett.
The cannery was basically razed, but the aquarium has the floor plan and roof line of the rambling old plant. Inside is one of the most technologically advanced museums in the world. A pumping system fills its tanks with nutrient- rich seawater every day.
Amid the Kelp Forest
One of this aquarium`s prize exhibits is its Kelp Forest, a 30-foot tank with long golden stalks of giant kelp growing at rates of five or six feet per day, just as they do in the ocean. Growing this seaweed in an aquarium setting had never been done before. It is successful here mostly because of a surge machine-designed by engineer Packard himself-creating underwater currents necessary for the plants to absorb nutrients.
Why such trouble for seaweed? The answer is that giant kelp creates an environment not unlike a tropical rain forest, with an array of life dependent upon it. The kelp forest, situated by a sweeping formal staircase inside the aquarium, is both majestic and curious. It is home to schools of rockfish, kelpfish the color of the leaves, leopard sharks, sardines, perch, and a sheephead with prominent canines.
Near the kelp forest are smaller tanks featuring ”subhabitats” that exist within or near the typical kelp bed. Among these is a ”rocky reef and crevice,” a closeup view of the ocean floor where kelp attaches itself to granite. In this tank, abalones, sponges and brittle stars seek shelter in the kelp`s tangly ”holdfast”-somethi ng like exposed roots-and feast on decomposing plant matter that floats down toward them.
Also in the area is the ”kelp lab,” where magnifying glasses and microscopes provide still closer views of the forest`s smallest inhabitants. The lab has a place where visitors can touch different kinds of seaweed and hold ”sea grapes” (an animal that resembles the fruit).
A joyful event possibly
Elsewhere in the darkened galleries, brightly-lit tanks show other
”communities,” living in relative harmony (as long as predators are well fed) and amidst a modicum of mystery. In the large Monterey Habitats exhibit, anemones, starfish and spiny dogfish co-exist with a new occupant, a seven-gill shark that might be pregnant. Its state is unknown because a seven-gill has never before given birth in captivity; aquarium scientists are watching carefully.
Another of the aquarium`s dozens of closeup tanks focuses on a small group of bottom dwellers such as the black-eye goby, six inches long with eyes that look nervously up from the top of its head. Multi-colored sculpins blend in with rocks, strawberry anemones and cobalt sponges.
It is an objective of this aquarium to pose questions, answer some, and maintain fresh interest in the ocean for everyone who visits. A relatively new project of the aquarium, along with its sister institution, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is to study the deep water beyond the rocky granite reefs. Scientists know that the bay`s rich aquatic life owes in part to the cold, nutrient-rich water that comes from deep ”upwellings,” but they want to know more. ”The deep sea is the largest and least known habitat on earth,” says the aquarium`s director, Julie Packard, also the founder`s daughter. That in itself makes it important.
New wing planned
She is now planning a new wing devoted to entirely deep-water and open-ocean marine life. In the meantime, a current exhibit features video screens displaying images from remotely operated submarines a mile or more down. One species you might meet here are siphonophores, gelatinous creatures that sometimes bind together to form a single, larger organism, although no one is sure why.
”We want visitors to be able to look over the shoulder of scientists,”
she says. ”We want them more comfortable with science, and maybe convince kids that they should pursue it as a career.”
Nature is easily sold all around the Monterey Bay, bordered by the Monterey Peninsula on the south and Santa Cruz 20 miles north across the water. Just beyond Santa Cruz is Ano Nuevo reserve, where 10,000 elephant seals cavort and mate in the beginning of winter. Midway in the curve of the bay is Elkhorn Slough, the largest salt-water marsh area in Northern California. In winter, whale-watching excursions go out from several points in the area.
The federal government is considering Monterey Bay for status as a national marine sanctuary, which would protect it from insults like waste water outflow and offshore oil drilling. ”Marine sanctuary” is a relatively new designation, but would likely mean development in research, education and tourism. In that way, it would expand what Monterey Bay Aquarium is already doing-which is teaching that this bay, like the ocean itself, is not just lovely, but inconceivably complex and fragile as well.
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For more information, contact Monterey Bay Aquarium, 886 Cannery Row, Monterey 93940; 408-648-4888.
