Monterey Bay Aquarium is a nonprofit public aquarium in Monterey, California, United States. Known for its regional focus on the marine habitats of Monterey Bay, it was the first to exhibit a living kelp forest when it opened in October 1984. Its biologists have pioneered the animal husbandry of jellyfish and it was the first to successfully care for and display a great white shark. The organization's research and conservation efforts also focus on sea otters, various birds, and tunas. Seafood Watch, a sustainable seafood advisory list published by the aquarium beginning in 1999, has influenced the discussion surrounding sustainable seafood. The aquarium was home to Otter 841 prior to her release into the wild as well as Rosa, the oldest living sea otter at the time of her death in 2024.
Early proposals to build a public aquarium in Monterey County were not successful until a group of four marine biologists affiliated with Stanford University revisited the concept in the late 1970s. Monterey Bay Aquarium was built at the site of a defunct sardine cannery and has been recognized for its architectural achievements by the American Institute of Architects. Along with its architecture, the aquarium has won numerous awards for its exhibition of marine life, ocean conservation efforts, and educational programs. It is known for the artistry of its exhibits, which have featured Dale Chihuly glass, David Hockney pieces, 19th-century Ernst Haeckel lithographs and Douglas Morton music compositions.
Monterey Bay Aquarium receives around two million visitors each year. It led to the revitalization of Cannery Row, and produces hundreds of millions of dollars for the economy of Monterey County. In addition to being featured in two PBS Nature documentaries, the aquarium has appeared in film and television productions.
Founding and design In the early 1960s, scientists at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station grew wary of the growing industry on Cannery Row. The station succeeded in convincing the university of their concerns in 1967, and Stanford University purchased the property on Cannery Row that housed the Hovden Cannery, a sardine cannery on the border of Monterey and Pacific Grove. Hovden Cannery closed in 1973 when its parent company moved the plant, and Hopkins used the facility as a warehouse. In the late 1970s, however, Chuck Baxter and Robin Burnett—both faculty members at Hopkins—along with Nancy Burnett, a graduate of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and Steve Webster, faculty at San Jose State University, thought of building an aquarium on the Hovden Cannery site. Three separate proposals for an aquarium in Monterey County occurred in 1914, 1925, and 1944, but financial backing and public support for the idea were not sufficient. Nancy Burnett brought the group's interest to her parents, Lucile and David Packard (cofounder of Hewlett-Packard), and their foundation commissioned a feasibility study. An aquarium was predicted to attract 300,000 paying visitors annually, with a potential future increase to 500,000, so, in April 1978, the Packards created the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, which purchased the Hovden property from Stanford for nearly US$1 million. Around this time, Julie Packard—also a daughter of David and Lucile—joined the planning group. David Packard funded construction with an initial donation of $7 million, with the caveat that the private nonprofit would be financially self-supporting after it opened. Due to an expansion of its planned exhibits—after visits to public aquariums in Japan—and the design and creation of exhibits inhouse, the Packards paid a final sum of $55 million.
General contracting firm Rudolph and Sletten predicted the building would take 31 months (two and a half years) to construct, but project manager Linda Rhodes and architectural firm Esherick, Homsey, Dodge, and Davis (EHDD) first had to design the facility to fit Cannery Row. Those involved intended to reconstruct Hovden Cannery rather than destroy it, and EHDD acknowledged that the latter would be "a big disservice to our visiting public and to the community". Concrete sections of the building were able to be kept, but other areas were repurposed; the cannery's old warehouse was converted into administrative offices, and a seawater system for the aquatic exhibits replaced the cannery's pump house that brought fish to the warehouse from floating storage tanks in the bay. The facility was constructed around the cannery's boiler house, which is preserved as a non-functioning public exhibit. Because the building would reside partially over water, unique challenges occurred throughout construction. Nearly half of the aquarium would be located over the bay in depths of up to , requiring foundational elements to be installed during low tide, which often occurred at night. According to a project manager with Rudolph and Sletten, excavations were sometimes lost as the composition of the ground underneath beach sand was inconsistent.
Various elements of the building mirrored that of Hovden Cannery, including its windows (to let in sunlight), plain cement walls, structural protection from waves and storms, and its many roofs. Exposed pipes and ducts along the ceiling also contributed to the industrial style of buildings on Cannery Row. The ironic transition from a plant that processed fish to an aquarium which would display them did not prevent the facility from appearing like a cannery, according to multiple journalists. The aquarium's successful representation of the cannery was acknowledged by the California Historical Society with a historical preservation award.
When Monterey Bay Aquarium opened on October 20, 1984, it was the largest public aquarium in the United States. On opening day, 11,000 people visited it and around 30,000 people attended the day's festivities. In reference to the disappearance of sardines (through overfishing), which caused the canneries to close, the aquarium said that "the fish are back!" Throughout the following year, 2.4 million people visited, which influenced assumptions about "the ability of marine life to entertain, educate, and promote a city." Within five years, it was reported in the Los Angeles Times that it was among California's most popular visitor attractions. By 1994, it was the most attended aquarium in the United States. For its design, EHDD was awarded a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1988. The institute's state chapter in California gave the facility its Twenty-five Year Award in 2011 and, in 2016, it was awarded the national Twenty-five Year Award, described as "a benchmark and role model for aquariums everywhere."
In discussing the aquarium's conservation and education programs, its track record for entertaining visitors, and its reputation for collaboration, the head of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums described it as "a definite leader" in 2009 to the Los Angeles Times. From when it opened in 1984 until 2026, Julie Packard was the aquarium's executive director. She was succeeded by Jenny Gray.
Aquarium exhibits According to a progress report during the aquarium's planning phase in 1980, the founders' efforts to build an aquarium developed from an interest in sharing marine life of the region with the public. This would be accomplished through its exhibits, featuring the aquatic habitats of Monterey Bay and central California. The idea to display marine habitats was inspired by the work of ecologist Ed Ricketts in his 1939 book on intertidal ecology, Between Pacific Tides. In the early 1980s this was a unique approach to the design of public aquariums, as the two largest public aquariums at the time in the United States—Boston's New England Aquarium (1969) and Baltimore's National Aquarium (1981)—focused on "magnificent coral reef exhibits or big sharks", and displayed few local species.
Seawater system
Monterey Bay Aquarium displays 35,000 animals belonging to over 550 species in of water. Filtered seawater from Monterey Bay is pumped into the Kelp Forest and other exhibits at per minute. At night, unfiltered seawater (or "raw seawater") is used for the Kelp Forest exhibit to maintain its realistic appearance. The use of unfiltered seawater allows animals to grow in the aquarium's plumbing, so it must occasionally be cleaned with tools called pigs, which blast through the pipes under pressure to remove organisms and debris. Control systems that maintain this seawater system and other life support components for the animals are mostly automated, tracking various chemical parameters and reducing the likelihood for human error during repetitive tasks such as filter media backwashing. The seawater system is controlled by more than 10,000 data points.
Kelp Forest exhibit At tall and long, the Kelp Forest exhibit is the focal point of Monterey Bay Aquarium's Ocean's Edge wing. Nearly three stories high, the exhibit is regarded as the first successful attempt to maintain a living kelp forest in an artificial setting. During the facility's planning and construction, professionals doubted that kelp could be grown in an aquarium at this scale. And, even if it could be grown, critics of the project did not think the public would be interested in seeing this representation of Monterey Bay. During the design phase, kelp scientists Wheeler North at the California Institute of Technology and Mike Neushal at the University of California, Santa Barbara informed the aquarium of the kelp's needs. The exhibit's success at sustaining giant kelp and its realistic appearance are attributed to the availability of direct sunlight, the use of natural seawater from Monterey Bay, and a surge machine (a large plunger) that replicates California's pulsing water currents. The surge machine, which plunges every 6 seconds, allows the kelp in the exhibit to grow an average of per day and was designed and constructed by David Packard. Kelp forests are important ecosystems along California's coast—comparable to tropical rainforests in their biodiversity—and, alongside giant kelp, the exhibit contains species of fish indigenous to Monterey Bay, including rockfishes and leopard sharks.
Open Sea wing In 1996, Monterey Bay Aquarium opened a second wing of aquatic exhibits, focusing on the pelagic habitats found offshore in Monterey Bay. Costing US$57 million and taking seven years to develop, the wing almost doubled the aquarium's public exhibit space. It consists of three separate galleries: various jellyfish and other plankton found in the bay; a pelagic, large community exhibit; and "ocean travelers", which features tufted puffins and sea turtles. When the exhibition opened, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the aquarium had the most jellyfish on exhibit in the world. In 1997, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums awarded the wing its Exhibit Award.