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By the early spring of 1962, all of western Washington was abuzz with Seattle’s upcoming world’s fair—the first to be held in the United States since 1940. On April 21, with the push of a button in the Oval Office, President John F. Kennedy released a swarm of balloons 2,300 miles away in Seattle. Seconds later, warplanes from the naval air station on nearby Whidbey Island roared over the city, thrilling the throngs of eager fairgoers. Over the next six months, nearly ten million people passed through the turnstiles, among them Elvis Presley, to film his forgettable It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963). Officially titled the Century 21 Exposition, the fair boasted exhibits from twenty-seven countries and a range of attractions. But with futuristic highlights such as the Monorail and Space Needle, it aimed above all to celebrate Seattle’s new modern identity. It seemed the perfect theme for the time and place. Just two months earlier, John Glenn had become the first American to orbit the earth, and the Cold War space race was in full swing. The Boeing Company, with its headquarters and three manufacturing plants in and around the city, was a leader in cutting-edge commercial and military aviation. If the 1962 world’s fair didn’t launch Seattle into the twenty-first century, it certainly signaled the city’s move away from its nineteenth-century extractive economy. But these changes came at a cost. Seattle’s maritime industries had been declining since World War II, even as Boeing jobs and freeway construction hastened flight to the suburbs. By the early 1960s, city leaders were pushing for urban renewal. The Seattle Times led the way, publishing a special feature in October 1961 that called for a “downtown for people.” To be sure, the Century 21 Exposition provided a short-term boost, drawing visitors to the fair site at the base of Queen Anne Hill and creating the new tourist hub of Seattle Center. But two months later, an event drew visitors to the waterfront itself.

The call came by ship-to-shore radio from a Washington State ferry. The skipper on the Seattle-Bremerton route had just spotted killer whales headed south, and he thought Ted Griffin should know. Shouting his thanks, the aquarium owner raced down the dock, leapt into Pegasus, and tore off in the direction of the sighting. Clocked at sixty miles per hour, the shallow-draft runabout may have been the fastest boat on Puget Sound, and it overtook the orcas near Vashon Island. But as Griffin throttled down, he realized to his disbelief that someone else was already chasing them. There, clear as day, was a blue helicopter hovering over the whales. Incensed, Griffin steered Pegasus closer, until he could almost touch the helicopter’s pontoons. Looking up, he spotted a burly man leaning out the cabin door and eying the pod. “Get away from my whales!” Griffin shouted. “Your whales?” the man laughed. “You’ll have to catch them first.” It was the first time Griffin had met Don Goldsberry, ex-fisherman and animal collector for the Point Defiance Aquarium (formerly the Tacoma Aquarium). The two men’s shared pursuit of orcas would soon bind them together. On this day, however, Griffin left feeling a bit embarrassed, having behaved, as he put it, “like a rancher possessive of his herd.” Some part of him knew his quest to capture and befriend a killer whale was becoming unhealthy. He had a struggling aquarium in Seattle and a growing family on Bainbridge Island. Orcas were his obsession, but they weren’t paying the bills. At home, he still talked and laughed with Joan and played with his little sons, Jay and John. But he had whales on the brain. He dreamed of them when asleep and sometimes mumbled about them when awake. With each reported sighting, he dropped everything—to Joan’s increased annoyance. In time, Griffin had come to see patterns in the animals’ migrations and behavior. He noted that they appeared when chinook salmon were running and that they seemed to cling to the west side of Puget Sound when headed south and to the east side when swimming north.

In chapter 3, “Nursing Corals Back to Life: Fragments of Hope,”the pendulum swings again, this time to document acts of hope by coral restoration scientists. Drawing on my visits to five coral nurseries—Culebra in the Caribbean, southern Israel, Honolulu, Coconut Island in Hawai’i, and the Florida Aquarium—this chapter explores the scientific, cultural, and emotional challenges facing restoration efforts and the criticisms directed toward this field from within the coral science community. While marginalized only a few years ago, coral restoration is becoming increasingly important to a growing number of scientists, who see it as a way to resist death through coral propagation. The coral nursery has assumed center stage in this process, and it emerges as part of broader attempts by restoration scientists to establish coral restoration as a science that is aligned with silviculture and restoration ecology. The coral nursery is finally compared to the coral farm, where corals are bred for the mariculture industry. Throughout, the chapter discusses the oftenfraught relationship between biologists, aquarists, and hobbyists, pointing to the importance of collaboration for coral survival.

Growing human needs are straining the ocean’s living systems, imperiling the ocean’s ability to provide humanity with essential benefits and services. But aquariums are well positioned to lend their trusted voices to help turn the tide. Some are moving from informing people to mobilizing them, and a few, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium, are taking direct action to promote changes. This chapter discusses the ways in which the Monterey Bay Aquarium is pursuing its mission “to inspire conservation of the ocean”—including (and going beyond) its visitor programs, education initiatives, and scientific research. The aquarium’s Conservation and Science division is expanding, integrating its research with its growing influence in ocean policy and its work to reshape the global seafood supply chain. The organization’s ultimate goal is to build a constituency that will work to protect and restore the world’s life-sustaining aquatic ecosystems. With global ecosystems in decline, there is no time to lose. By understanding their audiences, aquariums can craft meaningful ways to speak to their interests and help them be part of sustainable solutions.

As zoological organizations evolve in the twenty-first century to address the biodiversity extinction crisis as well as proactively demonstrate relevance in a changing public opinion landscape, their conservation portfolios are expanding. An increasingly popular approach among zoological organizations for addressing these issues more directly is the support of in-situ conservation research teams designed to detect, diagnose, and halt population declines in the wild. The distinct nature of zoological organizations relative to academic institutions and traditional environmental nonprofits, however, presents opportunities and challenges that must be considered when developing conservation research platforms. Using as a case study the relatively recent development and expansion of an in-situ research department at Shedd Aquarium, this chapter discusses the evolution of strategic planning including program selection criteria, evaluation methods, staffing considerations, and organizational adaption. If managed correctly, incorporating in-situ research into the many conservation opportunities afforded to aquariums and zoos is another mechanism for ensuring that the counterparts of the species in their collections remain safe in the wild while demonstrating the relevance of such organizations for contributing to scientific research and protecting biodiversity.

Aquarium designers strive, on the one hand, to provide visitors with an immersive underwater experience that simulates an authentic wilderness encounter. On the other hand, most aquariums also express a commitment to conservation, in their mission statements and branding. This chapter argues that the two goals are incompatible. The pursuit of “total immersion” inspires the construction of increasingly massive displays that quickly seem outdated in the face of technological advances. In an effort to recapture public imagination, and in response to waning attendance, aquarium managers often find it necessary to renovate or expand their facilities and collections. Meanwhile, these growing Plexiglas dinosaurs continue to increase their rates of CO2 emission and other ecological impacts. Conveniently, such real-world effects of aquarium expansion are mostly hidden from public view, thanks to disguised life support systems, concealed collecting efforts, and dramatized feeding schedules—all in the service of an immersive visitor experience. In contrast to this model, we are beginning to see the rise of small-scale regional aquariums that make no pretense at immersion. These institutions convey a more genuine conservation message by incorporating life support systems into the displays and, in some cases, returning specimens to the wild.

In the summer of 1968, Richard O’Feldman must have wondered how he came to be playing the flute on the back of a killer whale. The curly-haired twenty-eight-year-old was no stranger to marine mammals. Growing up on Miami Beach in the 1940s, he had often seen bottlenose dolphins. “Back in those days, Biscayne Bay was teeming with them,” he recalled, and his mother told him tales of dolphins rescuing downed pilots. Thirsting for adventure, fifteen-year-old O’Feldman lied about his age to join the National Guard and later enlisted in the navy. Over the next five years, he rode a US destroyer around the world, hearing his first dolphin calls in the ship’s sonar room and training to become a navy diver. Not yet twenty-one when he left the service, he dabbled in treasure hunting off the Florida coast before finding work at the Miami Seaquarium. His first day on the job, O’Feldman joined the marine park’s collection crew on an expedition to capture dolphins in Biscayne Bay. “In those days, you didn’t need a permit,” he explained. “You could do whatever you wanted.” As a diver, his task was to search for entangled dolphins while keeping the net clear of coral snags. The collection method made casualties inevitable. “I would find dolphins wrapped up dead,” he admitted. “We killed a lot.” By 1962, O’Feldman had helped capture more than a hundred bottlenose dolphins. The Miami Seaquarium kept some for display, but it sold most to other marine parks. Among them were US buyers such as Marineland of the Pacific and Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, as well as a growing number of European dolphinariums. “Places were just opening,” he noted, “and we were supplying them.” Among the eager customers was his former employer, the US Navy, which had just launched its Marine Mammal Program. O’Feldman saw nothing wrong with captivity—“never questioned it at all,” he told me. Never, that is, until he began working with the animals himself.

Ted griffin awoke with a start, but he wasn’t sure why. It was a warm night in August 1970, and all seemed calm and quiet. Water lapped against the boat’s hull as the lights of Coupeville flickered a mile and a half away. Yet something wasn’t right. The breathing of the whales behind the capture nets sounded clipped and nervous. “How long have they been blowing that way?” he asked the two men on watch. “Blowing? What way?” they answered. “All night I guess.” Straining his eyes in the dark, Griffin scanned the enormous pen, anchored just off the old Standard Oil dock. Everything seemed to be in order—except on the north side. The marker lights there were too far apart. He roused Goldsberry, and the partners jumped into a skiff to investigate. When they reached the floating lights, Griffin stared down at a loose cork line, puzzled. The net looked split. “Not split—cut!” yelled Goldsberry. “And in more than one place.” Griffin couldn’t believe it. Suddenly the orcas’ anxious breathing made sense. During the night, someone had slashed a section of the net. Large portions of loose mesh now drifted in the current, threatening to drown any whales nearby. Griffin and Goldsberry shouted for their crew, and in the following hours everyone worked feverishly in the dark—reattaching lines, mending mesh, anchoring nets. Had they reacted in time? Had the animals managed to avoid danger? Griffin needed to find out. Donning his wetsuit, he slipped over the cork line and into Penn Cove’s murky waters. At first, he was hopeful. All the whales seemed to be swimming near the surface. But a moment later, his eye caught a shimmer of white—perhaps a shark caught in the net? No, it was a tiny orca calf, no more than eight feet long. Ensnared in a floating portion of mesh, the little whale hung lifeless, head down. Other divers found two more, also calves. Initially, Griffin felt only nausea, but that soon gave way to rage. He wanted to lash out at those responsible.

Jeff foster arrived at Pier 56 in the summer of 1971 eager to get started. Although just fifteen, the Bellevue native already had extensive experience with wildlife. His father was head veterinarian at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, and Foster himself was a skilled diver who often brought live fish and octopuses to the Seattle Marine Aquarium. When Don Goldsberry offered him a job with the seal trainers, Foster accepted, and after a quick introduction to his co-workers, he received his first assignment. “There’s a bum out back,” said one of the trainers. “Go get him out of there.” In the aquarium business, this was a serious matter. Over the years, vandals had thrown objects into tanks and even attacked captive animals. The teen made his way to the rear entrance, where he could hear dolphins and seals splashing in nearby pools. There he found a man sleeping beside a dumpster. “He’s laid out, he looks pretty big, and I give him my tough voice—my voice that’s still cracking,” laughed Foster, adding in a high-pitched squeal, “You gotta get out of here!” As he helped the derelict to his feet, Foster was stunned by his size. His hand was “like a baseball mitt,” Foster recalled. “He is like six foot six—huge, huge guy.” At first, the confused man seemed willing to leave, but as they approached the gate, he decided to take a swing at the teen. Foster managed to duck away, and he never forgot what happened next. Unknown to Foster, Goldsberry had followed behind to make sure the youngster was safe, and he now grabbed the flailing attacker before he could throw another punch. “The next thing I know this guy is just lifted up and thrown,” Foster recounted. “Don picks this guy up and tosses him easily from here to that wall.” Yet protection quickly gave way to rage. “He proceeded to kick his teeth in, kicked the shit out of him.” Fearing for the man’s life, Foster sprinted to the aquarium office, where he found a woman behind a desk, Goldsberry’s wife, Pat.

Skana looked sick. On September 18, 1980, she failed to finish her show, and the next day she remained sluggish. Murray Newman and his staff were concerned. Along with Hyak II (formerly Tung-Jen), she was the Vancouver Aquarium’s biggest draw. In the thirteen years since Ted Griffin had captured her, Skana had been the star of Stanley Park, giving millions their first close-up view of a killer whale. And through her impact on Paul Spong and Greenpeace, she had helped reframe the international whaling debate. She may well have been the most influential cetacean in history, but she grew weaker each day, and despite heavy doses of antibiotics, she succumbed on Sunday, October 5. The necropsy revealed a fungal infection in her reproductive tract. Although aquarium officials were correct in noting that she had lived longer in captivity than any other killer whale, she was still young—no more than twenty. She might have lived fifty more years in the wild. Skana’s death left Hyak alone. He had come from Pender Harbour in 1968 as a small, frightened calf, and now he was a sexually mature male in need of a mate. Yet the acquisition of killer whales was no simple matter. The Department of Fisheries had stated that it would allow wild capture to replace orcas who died in captivity, but the Vancouver Aquarium hadn’t caught a killer whale since Moby Doll in 1964, and if it tried now, activists would surely oppose it. “I knew it would be unpopular for us to try to capture a live killer whale locally and felt a little frustrated about it,” Newman admitted. “To my mind, the entire awareness of the killer whales’ right to live was brought about by aquariums exhibiting these animals.” With nearby waters out of play, he looked to Iceland, which had become the primary source of captive orcas in recent years. After receiving the Canadian government’s permission to import whales, Newman boarded a plane for Iceland, arriving at Keflavik International Airport in the early morning of December 13, 1980.

Arthur Sullivan came back from France to the affairs of the National Training School for Music. The school was formally opened by Queen Victoria on April 16, and on May 13 she made an official visit with her eldest daughter, Princess Victoria. To Sullivan's relief he was to be called Principal of the school, rather than being given the clumsy title of Professional Director, which had first been suggested. For much of the year, Sullivan divided his time between the School of Music and the Royal Aquarium, supervising the musical arrangements and conducting concerts there every Thursday. To give him an appropriate title to match his academic position, Sullivan had been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by Cambridge University. Meanwhile, the long and acrimonious battle between William Gilbert and Henrietta Hodson was at an end. Their reputation was damaged by a private quarrel made public among their fellow professionals.

This chapter presents a historical overview of the rise of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century station movement in Europe. It sketches the movement’s major developments and puts these in a wider context. It does so by exploring how turn-of-the-century biological stations related to the other scientific workplaces of the time. The hybrid character of the biological stations is addressed by discussing their relation with university laboratories, public aquariums and natural history museums and by comparing their practices with the excursions of naturalist societies and large-scale state-sponsored surveys. Obviously the ways in which these different influences were integrated highly varied from station to station. The diversity indeed ranges from highly technological and indoor-oriented marine laboratories to poorly equipped wooden cabins in the woods.

This chapter provides an editorial introduction to The Ark and Beyond, an interdisciplinary volume exploring the history, ethics, science, and practice of zoo and aquarium conservation. The chapter traces the emergence and development of a distinct conservation mission in zoological parks, including the growth of conservation breeding and reintroduction efforts, conservation education programs, and zoo-based conservation research as zoos are becoming serious players in the wider institutional effort to protect endangered species and slow the loss of global biodiversity in this century. Ethical tensions and challenges surrounding the interplay of zoo animal welfare, recreation and entertainment, and the pursuit of broader conservation goals (linking ex-situ and wild populations) are also addressed. The chapter concludes with an overview of the volume’s main themes and questions, including: the shifting motivations driving zoo and aquarium conservation over time; the diversity of contemporary zoo conservation science and practice; the relationship between ex-situ (zoo) and in-situ (field) conservation efforts; alternative futures for zoo and aquarium conservation; and, finally, the debate over whether zoos can ever be “natural” or “wild” in a significant sense.

Keeping wild animals in captivity has a long history extending back to ancient civilizations. However, zoo and aquarium conservation programs did not emerge until the twentieth century when wildlife conservation in general became important to society. Significant individuals, publications, legislation, and programs pertinent to the evolution of zoo and aquarium conservation efforts are discussed in this chapter. Together, they represent the historic and cultural foundation of the earliest zoo and aquarium efforts to conserve endangered wildlife. How zoo and aquarium conservation programs were affected by society’s broader conservation interests and their role within these broader interests is also considered in this chapter. It is upon these early conservation efforts that the current zoo and aquarium conservation programs rest. This chapter considers whether the current programs are effective and whether they will eventually be successful. It also suggests what zoos and aquariums need to do in the future.

Conservation initiatives at public aquariums are performed via a large network of participants. Aquariums work with government organizations, academic institutions, and the general public to enact these initiatives. However, it is difficult to analyze the role of aquariums in conservation while focusing on these larger networks; the diversity of conservation goals is only outpaced by the diversity of aquariums and their work within them. This chapter looks at the history and current practice of conservation at public aquariums in the United States by tracing the history of three separate conservation constellations; that is, it analyzes the role of aquariums, both large and small, in three specific conservation initiatives including those of game fish, ornamental fish, and marine mammals. By tracing these smaller initiatives in the larger conservation network, the chapter shows the variable nature of conservation at aquariums based on the resources and geographical location of each institution.

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and its members envision a world where, as a result of the work of accredited zoos and aquariums, all people respect, value, and conserve wildlife and wild places. AZA and individual members have a history of dedicating themselves to this vision independently by organization or in small groups. This commitment has resulted in considerable resources for conservation around the world, as well as real conservation successes. However, the diffuse nature of this work has hindered the impact and public awareness about the accomplishments. In 2014, AZA SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction was developed to elevate the conservation capacity and reach of the AZA community and achieve clear conservation outcomes. SAFE is intended to engage zoos and aquariums collaboratively with other conservationists to save species; to integrate the wide-ranging expertise of AZA members in wild animal management, care, research, and conservation directly into efforts being made to save a species; and to incorporate the expertise of AZA members in awareness building and public engagement to leverage the power of 180 million annual visitors to help save species. This approach aims to help save vulnerable wildlife from extinction and protect it for future generations.

Modern zoos and aquariums are at a critical crossroads and confronted with two emerging, intertwined challenges. The first is a “cultural shift challenge” in which rapid worldwide urbanization, socioeconomic, and demographic changes lead to personal detachment from nature. The second is a “relevancy challenge” in which a digital media revolution is rapidly widening public access to information and changing perceptions about animal welfare. We present a hypothesized model of the zoo and aquarium experience in which engagement in pro-environmental behaviors is related to strong and complex relationships among visitors’ predispositions, animal experiences, affective connections, social exchanges, and the designed zoo setting. Based on recent findings along several lines of research, our model leads to recommendations for specific education strategies: 1. Improve visitor outreach and diversity; 2. Facilitate animal experiences and address animal welfare concerns; 3. Encourage visitors’ participation and engagement; and 4. Empower visitors to engage in pro-environmental behaviors. A focus on animal rights, while necessary, does not squarely address the ultimate ethical dilemma of how to engage humans in conservation action. As inspiring and accessible portals to nature, zoos and aquariums can be active players in advancing effective social change toward the relationship between humans and nature.

As an organized movement, concern for animal rights and welfare dates back to the nineteenth century. According to several recent articles, the focus of this movement is increasingly turning toward zoos and aquariums. Today’s progressive zoos dedicate considerable resources to conservation research, education and action in order to validate their animal collections. Zoos also study the conservation knowledge, attitudes and behaviors gained by their visitors in order to continually enhance their impact. Most of this research has occurred in zoos with global collections of animals. There is reason to believe that conservation science and education outcomes may differ between globally-focused zoos, and those with regionally-focused collections. This chapter explores features of regional institutions that may enhance their effectiveness as conservation organizations. It uses the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, one of the best-known regional bioparks, as a case study. Although regional and global collections have value, regional organizations may have advantages in both the reality and the perception of their conservation missions. Moreover, traditional zoos might extend their reach by establishing partnerships with regional or local conservation organizations.