Thoughts on Sea of Cortez and Aquariums, Part 1

(View of aquarium before tidepooling. You can see more clearly here that the aquarium is a renovated cannery.)

Yesterday the group met with Craig Strang, who helps run the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. He's been instrumental in introducing the discussion on ocean literacy in the k-12 classroom. He strongly believes that every students needs to be taught basic facts about the ocean to to understand the ways in which the earth (including humans) are affected by the ocean and the effects the ocean has on the earth (including humans.) More information about this can be found on the Ocean Literacy site http://oceanliteracy.wp2.coexploration.org/. This has been a longtime collaboration with Lawrence Hall of Science, NOAA, the College of Exploration, the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation.

(Manmade tide pool behind the aquarium that directly connects to the bay. They also host a scuba program there. )

Because we were visiting the aquarium for a behind the scenes tour and because Craig recommended it, I read an article by emeritus professor Todd Newberry on that compared aquariums and zoos. It also got into some interesting philosophical content. Here's an excerpt.

First, let's recognize the aquarium for what it really is. What people encounter there is not nature itself, nor the sea in miniature. It is a series of stage sets and show windows. The more we try to pretend that we are looking through a porthole in Captain Nemo's submarine, the more we see a fish tank. The ecology is compressed, confined. We are at a show. The action on the stage is a tightly controlled representation—a selective "re-presentation"—of nature. The aquarium's exhibits have been filtered through multiple human decisions on the way to creating an illusion. An exhibit succeeds, I think, when we participate in its illusion, as we might in that of a magic show or a play. The tired phrase for this-the one about the suspension of disbelief-implies accurately that an aquarium is really a theater. Even its stage is an illusion: in the aquarium, the surface of the sea has been rotated from horizontal to vertical and, like the biblical waters, parted so we can walk dry-shod through darkened depths.

Like the actors in our human plays, the fish in an aquarium, though doubtless the real thing, are in a kind of ecological disguise. In these artificially simplified habitats, they must lead simpler lives than they would in the wild. But like the human actors who make us see some of life's truths with unnatural clarity, the fishy ones can help us focus on just a few events and relationships out of the welter of them that we would encounter if we were in uncontrived nature. Notice (but for now notice only) how these anchovies school tightly together, but those clown fish keep their distance from one another. Watch (but for now watch only) how these jellyfish drive their way downward while those drift through their descent. The illusions of the tanks, like those of the theater, do not fake, they portray. As a visitor, my opportunity is to see through the aquarium's managed portrayals, into the sometimes unmanageable complexities of life in the sea.

An aquarium, then, is a theater. Alive as its exhibits may be, it can be compared, as well, to that other extremely filtered place, a museum. Even in an aquarium with giant exhibits, such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium or the Aquarium of the Pacific, we are in a museum with fish tanks instead of dioramas or paintings along its walls. And after a while, many aquariums, like many museums, produce the same behavior in most people, that of just moving on. There is so much to see! It is too big a meal. After an hour or two, I almost expect a docent disguised as a waiter to come up and ask me, "Are you still working on it?" And so this habit of trudging on, moving along. I call it "glance and go."

The group was challenged to each find an exhibit and sit quietly for 5 minutes. I chose to look at the bubble jellies, and I probably had 40 families pass by (it's a busy aquarium), and even when children wanted to linger, parents pushed them forward. More to see. Bigger animals. Animals with faces. Don't waste photos on jellyfish. When children asked questions, parents didn't bother the read the materials or even try to answer. No modeling curiosity and research here. But it wasn't all that dramatic. The jellies were beautiful. I looked for patterns in swimming, size and breathing speed connections, spot and texture differentiations, and thought about how I need to be reminded to slow down.

(First time a contained environment has been able to grow kelp. Top of the exhibit.)(Same exhibit from the general visitor view.)

You can read the entire article here. It's not too long, and it might make you reconsider how you visit zoos, aquariums, and museums.
http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/newberry_su04.html

(Back of one of the exhibits with easy access for animal care.)

This is part one because a long related Steinbeck quotation will be posted tomorrow. We're using the Sea of Cortez as key to understanding the philosophy and themes in all of Steinbeck's books.