Go Fish

Marine biologist Kenneth Yates’ shopping list reads like this: 1 million gallons ocean water, three sea otters, five sea lions, four harbor seals, four leopard sharks, four horn sharks, about 2,000 anchovies, 20 round stingrays, one Giant Pacific octopus, 10 rhinoceros auklets, six puffins and on and on.

Once he’s procured the creatures, which are destined for a $118-million mega-aquarium to open in Long Beach in 1998, Yates has to supervise their shipping and gradually introduce them into their various homes at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. “You can’t just plunk them all in at the same time,” he says. The million gallons of saltwater will be hauled in by barge, from off Catalina Island.

The venture, which is the anchor of an ambitious redevelopment of the waterfront but invokes in some minds ominous visions of a real-life episode of Hollywood’s “Waterworld,” is the most expensive yet of at least 30 major aquariums being developed around the country.

It’s a decade in which aquariums have become a thunderous trend, the latest in eco-entertainment, the “zoos” of the ‘90s. Their number has doubled in the past decade from 15 to 30 and by 2000, there will be at least 60, according to the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. The for-profit Dallas-based UnderWater World chain alone opened attractions this year in San Francisco and Minnesota and has more planned for Hawaii, New York and, yes, Las Vegas.

“If handled right aquariums can be a terrific urban development tool. They’re a proven attraction,” says Nicholas Brown, former director of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, which along with the Monterey Bay Aquarium is credited with serving as the 1980s model that began the Great American Aquarium-rush.

If handled right.

“It was assumed that all aquariums would solve all urban ills. There are enough semi-disasters now that we know that not to be true,” Brown says. Fledgling aquariums in Camden, N.J., and Tampa, Fla., for example, have been plagued by sinking attendance and financial problems after buoyant openings.

“To do something that works, we know that we have to be pretty damn engaging to the public,” says Warren Iliff, president of the Long Beach Aquarium and a longtime zoo director.

This is cruel Darwinism as it applies to the aquarium world. So, many of the new breed are high-concept productions that employ Disneyesque devices such as chatty prerecorded narrative, interactive video, fictional story lines, manufactured “fog” and “wind” and, in the case of one exhibit planned for Long Beach, piped-in tropical scents like coconut and pineapple.

“Our mission is to instill our visitors with a sense of wonder, respect and stewardship for the Pacific Ocean and its wildlife. You’ve got to get to the ‘wow’ first or you’re never going to get to the stewardship,” Iliff says.

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In Ancient Rome, trained sea lions would come into the Colosseum between the gladiatorial blood-fests, and bark for the crowd in answer to their names. Earlier than that, aquariums were known to have been built in ancient Greece and the Orient. However, they’ve never been so popular as now. Japan has about 60 and Walt Disney Co. is developing a $1-billion-plus Tokyo Disney Sea theme park.

In the U.S., city governments and developers view them as a sure-fire way to lure tourist dollars. They’re counting on people to show up based on the public’s proven fascination with wild animals as well as, to a lesser degree, public interest in protecting the environment. Nearly 35 million people visited aquariums last year, 50% more than in 1989.

About as expensive to make as a big-budget action movie, aquariums are capital-intensive, requiring millions of dollars annually in labor and energy to maintain the creatures and their environments. However, as long as cities are supporting them, marine biologists are galloping ahead to set up aquariums while interest is high.

Cities with plans at various stages of development include Santa Barbara, where a private company is seeking investors; Las Vegas, which is getting an UnderWater World plus an aquarium in the Stratosphere Hotel; Palm Beach, Fla., where a nonprofit corporation is discussing a bond issue with the city; and Honolulu, where the Hawaii governor has proposed one; as well as Albuquerque, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., Cleveland and Denver.

“We are in an ever-increasing awareness about things green and about the ecology. It’s been proven that zoos and aquariums are extraordinarily powerful teaching tools,” says Nicholas Brown, a senior advisor for the U.S. Environmental Training Institute in Washington. But don’t believe that tourists go to aquariums because they want to save the sea otter, Brown says; ecological awareness has simply not penetrated the masses. He attributes the interest to an enduring human fascination with living things.

“In the human breast there is a natural affinity for things that are alive, and this is called by the eminent biologist E.O. Wilson biophilia. This is why you see people crowding in front of the window of a pet store,” he says. Biophilia, Brown believes, is why zoos and aquariums in North America together attracted about 120 million people last year--more than went to baseball, football and hockey games combined.

Conservationist Anthony D. Marshall agrees. “We are only one of the possible 100 million species-if you include all the invertebrates--and we’re fascinated by them. They’re very ugly or very beautiful, they’re cuddly or they’re reptilian.” In the case of aquariums, “the construction and the planning is catching up with people’s interest,” says Marshall, a longtime board member of the New York Wildlife Conservation Society. Sea creatures have definitely become, as Marshall puts it, “animals of the moment.”

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In Long Beach, Warren Iliff is standing on a windy construction site near the bay and creating a shimmering vision of the complex that will one day be a phantasmagoria of sea life.

“My confidence is that, first, there is no facility like this for a hundred miles, and there are 17 million people living around here,” says Iliff, waving an arm around a vast lot full of bulldozers and circling gulls.

The man in charge of this project, the anchor of the Queensway Bay waterfront development, is an engaging idealist who speaks passionately about the aquarium’s raison d’etre as a center for marine conservation and environmental education.

The Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific is hoping to attract 1.7 million people a year, partly based on traffic that flows through the nearby convention center. The $118-million project is to be funded by municipal bonds. The goliath Long Beach project has been called a gamble by some residents and other aquarium officials. Former harbor commissioner Joel Friedland is challenging the financing in a lawsuit. Randal Hernandez, chief of staff to Mayor Beverly O’Neill dismisses the suit as “frivolous.” “In fact,” he adds, “we just got another boost for the aquarium,” noting that the project recently received a $6 million federal grant for its parking structure.

And with an eye to ensuring a high-quality project, Iliff has hired the premier designers in the aquarium world: Monterey Bay Aquarium architect Chuck Davis and Boston’s Joseph A. Wetzel Associates, who designed much-praised exhibits in Monterey Bay, Baltimore and Chicago.

Iliff also brought in Jim Hancock, the former vice president of marketing for Knott’s Berry Farm. “Southern California is a mecca of $1-billion theme parks. I’m used to having to compete with the big guys,” Hancock says.

The lure is designed as follows: Visitors will stroll through three consecutive “trips” to Southern California and Baja, to the Northern Pacific subarctic waters off Japan and Russia and finally to the tropical Pacific, where brightly colored fish and coral will be displayed in a 300,000-gallon tank.

To keep pulses racing, the visit will begin with a grand entrance into a 10,000-foot lobby with a cathedral ceiling. Hung above will be a life-size model of a blue whale--the largest living animal, whose tongue alone, in real life, weighs more than a full-grown African elephant.

The virtual voyage will include a dark kelp forest and an outdoor visit with seals among splashing waves. For the enormous tropical tank, “We’re talking about putting classical music in front of it, so people can gaze at the fish and enjoy the music. If that experience really works, people will come back just to sit there and do that,” Iliff enthuses.

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Behind the entrancing facade, conservationists will be supporting various breeding programs. In fact, most zoos and aquariums, including juggernauts like Sea World, fund affiliated wildlife conservation programs these days.

The goal is to spread a serious message about saving the planet without boring people stiff. This is a formidable goal, considering that of the 35 million people who visited aquariums last year, 6 million went to Disney World’s elaborate Living Seas theme park in Orlando, Fla., and an additional 11.3 million more visited Anheuser-Busch’s four Sea World parks, the Moulin Rouge cabarets of the marine world.

Aquariums, like their inhabitants, are learning as they evolve. What happened in Camden, N.J., to depress expected attendance? The fish were too brown. Drab New Jersey fish didn’t move visitors, and the board is rethinking the concept.

On San Francisco’s Pier 39, the $40-million UnderWater World opened with great hopes in April but has since been characterized by some in the aquarium business as UnderWhelming World. Founder Erik Pedersen, a Danish businessman who once worked for Occidental Petroleum, was one of the first to try to turn an aquarium into a moneymaker.

On a recent sunny weekend groups were herded through the exhibits on moving sidewalks at a rate of about 40 people every three minutes. The biggest shark on the colorful brochure hadn’t moved in yet. He was still in quarantine.

“Every aquarium improves with age, and you make adjustments along the way,” says a spokeswoman for the chain, Joy Frederick. “We’re adding three octopuses, a wolf eel and we’re continuing to expand the exhibits.”

To be fair, UnderWater World is affiliated with a nonprofit marine research institute, and observers say its second branch in Minnesota is an improvement.

In the end, experts say, a junky aquarium or one built only for the bottom line will be sussed out by a jaded public. “Kids now are much more aware than ever of endangered species and animals. If people feel like they’re being fooled, it’s not going to work,” says Jane Ballentine, spokeswoman for the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. in Bethesda, Md. “They might maintain a tourist base, but you have to have the support of your local community to survive.”

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What’s Hot and What’s Not in Aqua Land

Sea creatures are “in,” says Anthony D. Marshall, a noted conservationist who has swum in the Galapagos with sea lions. His recent book, “Zoo” (Random House), categorizes animals from high- to low-profile, like a Vanity Fair “who’s in, who’s out” column, based on 1) how much attention they get from conservationists and 2) their popularity at aquariums and exhibits.

A sampling of the fishy hierarchy:

Old Faithfuls

shark

sea lion

dolphin

penguin

American alligator

flamingo

Fish of the Moment

killer whale

river otter, sea otter

Chinese alligator

Up and Coming

jellyfish

octopus

hippo

Waiting to be Appreciated

elephant seal

tuna

manatee