Monterey Bay Aquarium, A new year’s note from our executive director,...

A new year’s note from our executive director, Julie Packard:

I hope that 2012 is off to a great start for you. For us at the aquarium, 2011 will be a hard act to follow, with so many great successes in our work to assure a future with healthy oceans, and some wonderful animals on exhibit for you to meet during a visit.

We have big plans in store, and always expect a few surprises.

For me, the highlight of 2011 came when California banned the sale or possession of shark fins, ending our role in the global trade that’s decimating shark populations worldwide. I’m so proud that Monterey Bay Aquarium was the lead sponsor of legislation that took effect on January 1. With your help, and working with our many coalition partners, I hope we can outlaw the shark fin trade nationally in the not-too-distant future.

As always, the aquarium kept changing all year long. Perhaps you saw one of the baby sea otters we rescued and raised on exhibit, or got a glimpse of the penguin chicks that hatched in our Splash Zone colony.

Our biggest transformation was the July opening of our Open Sea exhibits, where sharks, tunas, ocean sunfish and sea turtles share a million-gallon exhibit with a huge school of swirling sardines. The surrounding galleries have a fresh new look and some very cool new digital interactive displays.

Also during the year, we welcomed our sixth white shark for a time in our Open Sea exhibit.

Developments like these helped earn us recognition as the Most Awesome Zoo or Animal Park from Red Tricycle, an online guide for parents to plan fun things to do with their children – the latest of many accolades for our exhibits.

We also launched our new Children’s Education Endowment Fund to help ensure that free school visits for children, a hallmark of the Aquarium since our founding, continue for future generations. In fact, we were all excited to welcome the 2 millionth student to the Aquarium just this week.

We continued to tag and track white sharks in the wild – work that provided the basis for a first-ever population estimate for adult white sharks off our coast. And we made it easier for seafood lovers to make ocean-friendly choices when we released a Seafood Watch app for Android, complete with a Project Fish Map feature that lets you pinpoint restaurants and markets where you’ve found sustainable seafood.

There’s much more to come in the next 12 months, including a super fun new jellies special exhibition opening in March. Thank you so much for your interest and support. I hope to see you soon in Monterey!

January 25, 2012

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