Monterey's Aquarium

I was handed a free ticket to the Monterey Bay Aquarium this morning. As much as I love it, I don't go very often. Which is a shame. It's beautiful. Not simply beautiful, it's stunning. It's also just a mile away from my home. So, I took advantage of the gift and went on over to see the place again.

In the years preceding 1984 when the Aquarium was opened, Ocean View Boulevard (now renamed Cannery Row) was a boring, tired place, a remnant of a red-hot industry that had changed Monterey. Sardine factories and related businesses that had produced the odor of fish and money were in tatters or became tacky and unimaginative trinket shops. People visited out of curiosity after reading John Steinbeck's popular books, but that was it. They left without knowing anything about the deep ocean just steps away, a vast place miles deep invisible to all but the most determined members of science.

Meanwhile, Julie Packard, of Hewlett-Packard family fame, had become intensely interested in marine biology and looked around for something to do about it. She connected two simple dots:  Large empty industrial space and marine biology.  Hmmm, how about an aquarium? Indeed, the only aquariums ever maintained for visitors up to that point had been on the wharf and contained some glum and miserable-looking rock cod and other small local fish in 20-gallon tanks, displayed in shop windows for curious passers-by.

Ms. Packard, blessed with access to large sums of money and a very grand vision, put together an idea and a team. She built what instantly became an industry leader in the world of public aquariums, the first of its kind anywhere. I recall hearing rumors as they began to emerge, talk about an incredible space with huge tanks that would show thousands of fish never before seen or exhibited on a large scale. It would be world class and meant to be here for a very long time. Everyone felt a new energy and sense of possibility, that businesses had better get ready because people were going to come in large numbers. Entrepreneurs went into high gear. Restaurants, parks, hotels, museums, more hotels and more restaurants as well as related sight-seeing businesses were built and have been viable ever since the opening of the Aquarium. It has been and continues to be a very important influence on the communities all the way around Monterey Bay in innumerable ways.

More importantly, scientists of all stripes have been happily discovering new species and features of the ocean, using the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary as their main focus. It's huge and even though the Aquarium has been in existence for 28 years new species are being discovered constantly. Young interns and science geeks pray to be associated with or be hired by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute). Youngsters who visit during open house dates see Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) and bizarre creatures that are being studied and underwater features that are being mapped.

Education efforts by the Aquarium and MBARI have reached people all over the world. Seafood Watch is the most obvious public information effort. Small cards are handed out, showing common seafood items you'll find on menus and in stores. There you can see information about what seafood, if any, you should buy. Wild-caught salmon, for instance, is preferable to farm-raised. Farm-raised species of certain shellfish are sometimes preferable, so to keep it all straight you just check the card while you shop or order from a menu.

When I visited today, the Aquarium was as beautiful as ever. The beauty of each exhibit is clearly apparent, but what I enjoy the most about the place is that the ocean out there that I see every day is not distorted or made silly. Nor are the sciences inaccessible. Simply put, the life of the ocean does its dance right before your eyes, and you use every one of your senses to appreciate it.

And guess what? I finally joined.

Badgers and Whale Poo

In a strangely redeeming way, marauding badgers and pooping whales are heroic.

In Idaho, where any form of life that competes with human hunters for game and grazing rights is shot on sight, badger populations have been eradicated wholesale.  So have wolves, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, foxes, feral cats and dogs, and any other "varmint" on four legs.  Consequently, prey species have run amok at times.

Currently, pelicans are becoming a nuisance at lakes where fishermen want to fish, dammit.  So what are they going to do to control them?  Reintroduce badgers.  I'm thinking that once pelicans are obliterated, the badgers will be escorted to the door and their furry rear ends booted out again.  So there you go, a redneck conservation plan, plain and simple-minded.

Next, we turn our attention to the ocean.  There, as you know, whaling ships have been prowling for a few centuries, taking whales for meat, blubber and various other useful products.  In the past, say, 40 years or so, the Japanese, and a few Scandinavian countries have turned whaling into a scorched-earth industry where huge whale processing plants, aka ships, haul in every whale they can get their hands on and turn them into cat food and sushi.  Yum.  It's still happening in spite of laws restricting catches to those needed to perform "research."

A worrisome new problem has emerged.  The oceans are slowly and steadily becoming more acidified.  Reefs are dying and other species like krill are struggling, badly in some cases.  The situation is now being studied around the world.  If the oceans die, we are dead, so this is a big problem.  One solution is to dump huge quantities of iron into the water to neutralize the acid.  It would have to be done consistently and repeatedly for years to come, possibly forever.  That could get expensive, you know?  No one's really happy with that idea right now. But wait, what about the normal balance of life?  What about what the whales' role is in it all?  

A few smart people sat down, as they do a few times a day, and one of them connected a few dots.  The solution?  Whale poo.

Whales and what whales add to the ocean -- poo (technically called feces, but you can also call it a lot of other things) -- exist in smaller numbers than they would if people were not harpooning them around the world on a daily basis.  No whales, no whale poo, not good, excrementally speaking.

Here's the simple loop that has been trashed by trawlers and whalers:  Whales eat krill, which are iron rich.  The whales digest the krill and then poop.  The poop releases iron into the ocean water that consequently neutralizes the ocean's acidity.  In non-acid water, krill populations remain robust and abundant, the whales have more krill to eat, they poo, the ocean is neutralized....and you see how it goes.

We are a species that is relatively new to the whole planet -- relative to insects, micro-organisms, fish and so on -- and we keep finding ourselves the clumsy kid in the sandbox.  We have barged around knocking things over, smashing the furniture, crushing everything we touch.  We keep discovering we've ruined things to a point of no repair or that we need to spend a lot of time patching up the stupid messes we've made.  Indigenous people who lived in nonindustrial times took the time to listen and look at what was going on around them instead of watching TV, so there was less intrusion on checks and balances in the natural world.  We don't do that, so we keep creating acid rain, acid oceans, dead zones, gyres of plastic and creating Superfunds to clean up after ourselves.  Here we think we are so darned smart.

So, the lesson is:  Whale poo is your friend and badgers would never have let the pelicans raid the fishponds in the first place if we had been paying attention.  Awesome.

A Sign on Easter

Brilliant rays of light gleamed off the ocean and sand, but they were quickly shrouded in the clouds of an approaching storm.  In the space of a minute, the morning was flooded briefly with intensely bright sunlight, as if beamed straight from heaven.  Could have been a sign from God, but maybe that was too obvious.  Something more coincidental happened just then.  

I was walking on Cannery Row early this Easter morning.  Assuming you've read novels by John Steinbeck, you know that this very street was the heart of a busy industry of canning, shipping, packing and supply companies, all intent on canning sardines.  Now there are tourist shops and, at the far west end of the street, the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  Just east of Prescott where it Ts into the The Row, lies a vacant lot that's surrounded by chain link fence and littered with broken bottles and weeds.  On the sidewalk outside the fence, in the dust and debris was, literally, a sign, right at my feet.

The canneries are all gone, but they used to stand along what was then called Ocean View Boulevard.  The buildings that housed them for about 40 years were stinky, noisy and dank.  Older local residents remember the cannery days very well and say, "It stunk to high heaven."  But they remember being called to work by the loud whistle that blew when catches of the silver fish arrived by the tons on fishing boats.  It was hard work and shifts ended when the last fish was cooked and the last can was packed and sealed.

The sardine industry went bust, and one by one the buildings were shuttered and stood vacant.  A few bars and odd concerns remained, but mostly there was rust, boarded windows and cement foundations after fires burned through.  I saw one of the shuttered buildings go up in flames.  The fire raged, lighting up the night like a huge torch.  Arson was suspected, of course, but nothing happened.  What remained was an ugly remnant of former boom times, and people began to look for renewal, an end to the blight.  1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium opened, and since then The Row has risen phoenix-like from flames, rot and ruin.

Change has occurred slowly.  The sun bursting through storm clouds this morning was instantly symbolic of the renewal and change along the Row.  Today is Easter, a Christian holy day signifying rebirth, the energy of spring, and resurrection.  Coincidentally, there in the sidewalk was a reproduction of Easter brand sardines packing label.  I don't know that I would have made the connection between urban renewal and the resurrection of Christ but for the sign embedded in cement at my feet.  Seeing it, the connection was obvious.  All I needed then was heralding trumpets and angels singing for it to have been truly God sent.