‘We have an amazing piece of the planet here’: Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Julie Packard to retire (sort of) after 40 years
Forty years ago, Silicon Valley pioneer David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, his wife, Lucile, and their daughter Julie, a young marine biologist, cut the ribbon on a remarkable family project — a $55 million, state-of-the-art oceanfront aquarium constructed on the site of an old World War I-era sardine cannery on the Monterey waterfront.
Since then, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has exploded in popularity, drawing 2 million visitors a year, and changed the way aquariums around the world are designed. It has rescued sea otters, exhibited animals never seen before in U.S. aquariums, including great white sharks, advocated for environmental laws, and created a “Seafood Watch” program used by millions to make informed choices at the grocery store.
In January, Julie Packard announced she will step down by the end of the year as the only executive director the aquarium has ever known, while still remaining on its board.
Q: What did you expect when your family started the aquarium 40 years ago?
A: The concept was really about creating a place to tell natural history stories about Monterey Bay. How it has evolved over time has completely exceeded our wildest expectations. We had no idea that we would expand to have such a reach, such a big audience, and have such an impact on conservation, to be honest. It’s been super fun and exciting to see how the place has grown.
Q: I remember hearing that your father was skeptical about building an aquarium featuring kelp. Basically a museum for seaweed.
A: Anyone who dives recreationally knows that diving in the kelp forest is amazing. It’s like being in a cathedral. It’s so beautiful and so inspiring. We wanted to try to recreate that. In the beginning, most people were very skeptical. Early on we did a focus group and I remember one guy said something like, “Kelp? Nothing lives in it.”
Q: How has the aquarium’s message to the public evolved?
Picture at the opening of the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 1984 are Julie Packard, who serves as director, and her father David Packard. (Photo courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium).
Julie Packard. (Photo courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Julie Packard, executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Monterey Mayor Clyde Roberson use a giant set of scissors to cut a rope of kelp to open the new Juli Plant Grainger Animal Care Center as dignitaries, donors. And staff look on on Tuesday November 27, 2018. Dr. Mike Murray, the director of veterinary services at the aquarium is at left. (David Royal/ Herald Correspondent)
Aquarium guests look at the kelp forest tank. (Arianna Nalbach – Monterey Herald)
Rosa swims by the glass for aquarium visitors in September 2022. She was the oldest sea otter on exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and died at age 24 last Wednesday. (Arianna Nalbach – Monterey Herald)
One of the Monterey Bay Aquarium staff members checks on the sea otter pups through a TV. (Arianna Nalbach – Monterey Herald)
Emily Simpson, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Content Strategist,” at the aquarium’s Kelp Forest exhibit in Monterey, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. If the shark emoji on your phone is anatomically correct, thank Simpson, who went on a quest for the perfect shark emoji. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
Before grooming a baby sea otter under rehabilitation, Sea Otter Care volunteer Tammy Slenkovich wears amorphous shape clothing to prevent it from becoming attached to humans at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., on Tuesday, May 30, 2023. After rehabilitation, the otter will be released into the wild. The aquarium’s otter program is responsible for reestablishing much of Northern California’s critically endangered Southern Sea Otter population. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
A sea otters at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., on Tuesday, May 30, 2023. The aquarium’s otter program is responsible for reestablishing much of Northern California’s critically endangered Southern Sea Otter population. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
Monterey Bay Aquarium Marine Biologist Sandrine Hazan, left, and Sea Otter Rehabilitation Specialist Allie Bondi-Taylor, release a sea otter into a pool at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., on Tuesday, May 30, 2023. After rehabilitation, the otter is will be release into the wild. The aquarium’s otter program is responsible for reestablishing much of Northern California’s critically endangered Southern Sea Otter population. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Seafood Watch” program highlights the most sustainable seafood.
(Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Outside the Monterey Bay Aquarium Mike Amaditz, aquarium creative director, shows off his Blueview Pacific sneakers in demin to colleague Claudia Pineda Tibbs, sustainability program manager. (Blueview).
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 21: Beth Redmond-Jones, Vice President of Exhibitions for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, looks at sardines at the entrants of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new “Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean” exhibit in Monterey, Calif., on Monday, March 21, 2022. The sardines show sea life near the service before visitors continue through the exhibition viewing deep-sea life. The new exhibit is the largest in North America. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 21: Part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new “Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean” exhibit in Monterey, Calif., on Monday, March 21, 2022. The new exhibit is the largest in North America, focusing on deep-sea life. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 21: Animal Care team member Ellen Umeda feeds jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new “Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean” exhibit in a water control room in Monterey, Calif., on Monday, March 21, 2022. The new exhibit is the largest in North America, focusing on deep-sea life. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
MONTEREY, CA – NOVEMBER 2: Monterey Bay Aquarium Marine Biologist Sandrine Hazan, of Monterey, left, and volunteer Tammy Slenkovich, of Aptos, carry a sea otter to an area to get it vaccinated for COVID-19 in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2021. The vaccine, created for Minks, is being used at the aquarium to vaccinate sea otters to protect them against COVID. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
After being closed for 14 months, the Monterey Bay Aquarium reopened to the general public on May 15. (James Herrera – Monterey Herald)
Southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis) swimming underwater and playing in the Sea Otter exhibit. (Jessica Wan/Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Scenic shot of the Great Tide Pool and exterior back deck of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (Tyson V. Rininger/Monterey Bay Aquarium)
MONTEREY, CA – SEPTEMBER 8: Monterey Bay Aquarium diving volunteers, from left, Alice Bourget, Linda Grier, and Dan Crask, get an underwater vacuum cleaner ready before cleaning the Kelp Forest exhibit tank at the aquarium in Monterey, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020. All are part of a group of divers who volunteer to clean the exhibit tanks at the aquarium. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
A crew at work installing a new tile roof at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. (Vern Fisher – Monterey Herald)
In this photo taken Monday, March 26, 2018, three girls watch a sea otter pass by during its afternoon feeding at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif. California sea otters, once thought wiped out by the fur trade, are booming again in a federally-protected enclave of Northern California coast. But outside that sanctuary, a new study finds, a chain of unintended bad consequences has followed man’s removal of otters as a top predator of the sea, and is preventing the furry creature’s return to its former range from Baja California north. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute principal engineer Mathieu Kemp. center, helps youngsters at a tank in the build your own remotely operated vehicle (ROV) area during the open house at MBARI in Moss Landing, Calif. on Saturday July 29, 2017. (David Royal/Herald Correspondent)
People view the jelly fish exhibit as Patrick Webster, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s social media producer, was live on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017 on camera with a special 360-degree attachment on his smartphone that creates the 360-degree experience for viewers on Periscope. (Vern Fisher – Monterey Herald)
A Panamic cushion star attaches itself to the glass of the Baja’s Coral Reef display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, March 9, 2016. The exhibit called “Viva Baja!” features five different galleries showcasing both sea and land creatures of Baja as well as hands-on interactives for all ages. The exhibit opens later this month. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group)
AUV specialist Doug Conlin works on Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institutes 5-meter-long sub known as the “Iceberg AUV” in their Moss Landing facility on Tuesday, January 12, 2016. (Vern Fisher – Monterey Herald)
In this Sept. 10, 2010 photograph, a “Seafood Watch” sign hangs over the seafood counter in Whole Foods in Hillsboro, Ore. As part of a growing focus on what seafood is considered “sustainable”, the grocery chain has launched a new color-coded rating program with the help of Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute that measures the environmental impact of its wild-caught seafood. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
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Picture at the opening of the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 1984 are Julie Packard, who serves as director, and her father David Packard. (Photo courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium).
A: Over time, scientists have realized there were a lot of impacts — negative human impacts — that have been happening in the ocean generally and even here. So we started evolving our message to focus more on including humans as part of the story. More specifically, what are the conservation stories that we need to be telling people about?
Q: You’ve endorsed environmental legislation and ballot measures.
A: California has always been a leader in environmental protection. But until a few decades ago, we weren’t really applying that to the coast and ocean so much. It’s been wonderful to see how California has become a leader. We have the biggest network of marine protected areas in the nation. Bills we have promoted banned the sale and possession of shark fins. And more recently there have been bills to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean.
All of these things are possible because people here value our environment. We have an amazing piece of the planet here. It’s just remarkable.
Q: What has been the biggest challenge over the last 40 years?
A: No surprise, it was COVID. We had to close for 14 months. When you have no visitors, if you’re an art museum, you just close the doors. If you have no visitors and you’re an aquarium, you have no income, but you still have to take care of all the animals and pump the seawater.
We had a huge outpouring of support from our donors and supporters to help financially.
A: It’s not an animal. It’s a plant. Kelp. It’s such an amazing organism. It’s one of the fastest-growing plants in the world. It lives in rough conditions and supports a huge ecosystem.
Beyond that? The ocean sunfish. The Mola Mola. It’s remarkable. The world’s largest bony fish. It eats jellyfish, which would appear to have very little nutritional value. It’s an unlikely animal to make it in the open ocean. And they’re huge. The one we had in our exhibit in the early days was 800 pounds.
Q: Are there memories that stand out over the past 40 years?
A: When we opened our big expansion, the open sea wing (in 1996), that was so exciting and so remarkable, especially the million-gallon exhibit with the huge acrylic panel. People who come to visit the aquarium have no idea of how much work, how much R&D, how much finessing, and all the nuances of the seawater system and assembling animals and everything goes into pulling something like that off.
Q: “Star Trek IV” in 1986 was filed at the aquarium. Did you get to meet Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner?
A: I remember William Shatner. He kind of hung out in his trailer most of the time. We were very excited about Leonard Nimoy. They had this little robotic whale. Today they would do that with CGI. It was so old school. It’s really funny to think about now.
Q: Why are aquariums like Monterey Bay important to society?
A: We need to be talking about saving the ocean because most of nature is ocean. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has become a treasured institution and a trusted voice. It will continue to have a powerful impact on how people think about the ocean and how people understand the actions we need to take.
Now we’ve got a national marine sanctuary. We’ve got protections for the wildlife. So that’s really the best story that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is telling.
Q: There’s a hopeful message there.
A: Yes, that hopeful message is one of our very most important core values. I believe that in my heart. The ocean can recover if you give it half a chance.
Q: How would you sum up the health of the world’s oceans right now?
A: We have hopeful areas where recovery is happening or already has happened. Certainly in nations where strong fishing laws have been enacted and they’re being enforced.
At the same time, we have impacts of greenhouse gas pollution. The world needs to get a handle on turning that around because, despite protections we put in place like marine protected areas, if ocean chemistry is changing and the ocean is warming, those are really existential-level issues for life in the ocean.
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