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.

Newly volunteered

It's been quiet around the Grove, but that may just be because everyone is chilled to the bone. The sun's zenith today barely nudged the thermometer above 55 degrees. I have on a turtleneck shirt, a fleece vest, a fleece jacket and warm pants. I am setting my furniture on fire to keep my home warm and huddling near it, remembering Hawaii.

The joke on residents here in Fungus Corners is that homes are not built with insulation. The average temperature is 54 degrees. The ocean is the same temperature. The only way you can tell you're in your living room versus being in the ocean is kelp. It's kind of like no one in Florida having a fan in their homes or any snow shovels in Minnesota. I put my shoes out to dry from my walk on the beach last weekend (six days ago) and they were still wet today when I needed them again. One day last fall when it was actually sunny, I became especially frugal and conservation minded and decided to hang my newly washed towels out to dry on a line out in my back yard. In the sun. They never got dry. The sea air, you see, is very moist, and even when it's not foggy, it still feels foggy.

I've been looking for some way to exert some effort in behalf of Mother Nature in spite of her insistence on chilling me to the bone in late May and sending her minions (gulls) to shit on my car. I still love her and her eccentricities in spite of all that so I signed up as a volunteer to monitor pollution spilling into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. A notice appeared in our local paper, so I got myself organized and sufficiently curious to find out just what was going on.

About 25 grizzled old people a.k.a. Baby Boomers and one young, pretty Millennial showed up. What is a Millennial anyway, you ask? A person raised by a Baby Boomer who has been taught that they are to follow their passion in life, they are winners, they are destined to succeed, they are special and also to work hard in school so that all that their parents expect of them and they expect of the world will be possible. That is, they will be CEOs a week or two after they graduate from Harvard.

Boomers, a group I am added to by virtue of my age, are inherently intent on volunteering for everything under the sun as long as it involves understanding the sun, ascertaining the spiritual nature of the sun, decrying all manner of energy use except that derived from the sun, and reminiscing about embroidering emblems of the sun, daisies and rainbows on their cutoff jeans back in the 60s. Boomers begat Millennials and fomented all their neuroses. Boomers are the ultimate helicopter parents, hovering around their newly adult children as they praise their every intake of breath and successful completion of dressing, brushing and flossing. Boomers are also now monitoring the slow but steady decline of their parents - the very parents they derided so vigorously for being conformist and dull as they plodded their way out of the 50s with Gin and Tonics gripped tightly in their hands at cocktail hour every day. Millennial are the generation who tried to escape their parents on Facebook and now realize, to their horror, that their parents have embraced Facebook like a long-lost commune.

So, we all gathered in the parking lot of the Marine Sanctuary offices in New Monterey yesterday, we Boomers and the one Millennial. After signing up we walked off to San Carlos Beach, which literally crawls with SCUBA divers every weekend. I noticed the Monterey Chamber of Commerce employees (sea otters and other attractive marine life) were practicing their cute poses, frolicking winningly and posing alertly for cameras. One came astonishingly close to shore and seemed about to step up on the sand and begin dancing for us. A few gulls idled by, probably digesting a late lunch and building up a supply of guano to blast at parked cars. They had that bored, the-world-is-full-of-shit look on their faces and, as usual, were just too happy to prove it with gusto. I considered putting a Diarrhea Curse on them, but obviously that would be counterproductive. I need to learn a Constipation Curse for them because everything they eat produces the opposite effect.

We learned about measuring pH, testing air and water temperature, measuring flow width, moisture width, flow depth, describing the appearance of the area, and detailing information about the instruments used for each test. We learned the secret names of outflow pipes we were to monitor during the dry season. Names like Steinbeck, Twins, Congress and others. We felt thrilled by the induction into a nefarious secret spy society, even if all we were to do was collect data on street runoff. We felt cool. I wanted to wear a Fedora and Ray Bans, carry a really clicky pen, snap the clip on my clipboard and stare into the dark vaults of offending storm drains accusingly.

The cities of Monterey and Pacific Grove use the data we Boomers and One Millennial will gather in order to deter illegal use of gutters for dumping. They need to prove to the EPA and some other pollution control government agencies that they are trying to detect and thus prevent pollutants from getting to the bay. I'm all for it. Deterrence, that is. I am thus pitching in and helping to produce data for the various agencies and entities to mull over.

Feeling smug and elite with our newly gained skills, we disassembled and went our various ways, Boomers to save the universe and Millennial to text her friends. I ambled along Cannery Row a little ways. The surf swell amounted to about four inches. It could have been a lake out there except for the perky heads of sea otters popping up in the kelp beds now and again. The sky grew rosy between wisps of fog that had floated overhead from the Pacific Grove Perpetual Fog bank. It was the time at last when the sun drags her petticoats over to the horizon and sighs heavily as she sets herself on down for the day. The streetlights winked on and the tiny wavelets shushed the laughing insolent gulls.

Salt is always caked on my shoes, my fingers are stiff from the chill air, but the Groove is cool now and again.