Nightingale turned city aquarium into global force
After a quarter of a century, John Nightingale is leaving the Vancouver Aquarium a radically different organization than the one he came to in 1993.
Only the second director in the aquarium’s 62-year history, Nightingale announced Thursday he would be retiring at the end of 2018, triggering a global search for his replacement.
“On the mission side, I will carry on my interest in oceans and ocean conservation. Some of how I work on that will change,” he said in an interview. “I won’t have to do all that paperwork.”
Nightingale will continue his term on Polar Knowledge Canada’s board and will work on some of the research being done by the aquarium, through the Ocean Wise Conservation Association.
Asked about his most important legacy, Nightingale said he’s proudest of having transformed a local institute into a global force for ocean conservation that involves people around the world in ocean issues.
But he also mentions the annual Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, the Ocean Wise Sustainable Seafood program for restaurants, the Coastal Research Institute and creation of the classroom in a truck called AquaVan that travels to Metro Vancouver schools and across B.C.
On his watch, attendance grew from 750,000 to a peak of 1.2 million in 2016; the annual budget from a small deficit on a $10-million operating budget to a self-sustaining organization with revenue-producing subsidiaries that support its $40-million-ayear operations.
Nightingale oversaw aggressive expansions and led the aquarium through its most tumultuous period with the long-running battle over having whales, porpoises and dolphins on display in Stanley Park.
It culminated in January with the aquarium’s decision to no longer have cetaceans and almost certainly played a part in the timing of Nightingale’s retirement.
The decision was taken after the unprecedented deaths of five cetaceans over 18 months from a toxin of an undetermined origin. It came in the midst of tremendous pressure from Vancouver’s park board, which leases the Stanley Park site to the aquarium.
The decision is an apt bookend since Nightingale’s arrival coincided with the first lobbying efforts by animal-rights activists to release cetaceans and other critters into the wild. (The aquarium had already bowed to pressure and ended the scripted shows with orcas and dolphins doing crowd-pleasing tricks.)
In an April 1993 interview with The Vancouver Sun, the new director made it clear he opposed the aquarium going whale-free.
“Whales are not kept here for the enjoyment of the staff, nor, increasingly are they kept for predominantly marketing reasons,” Nightingale said at the time. “They are kept because we can’t explain the marine ecosystem without fostering a sense of caring about it — and that comes from people seeing these animals for themselves. Slides or videos won’t do it.”
Twenty-five years later, his response remains virtually unchanged.
“The decision to have no more cetaceans was hard for anyone who ever watched people — whether they were eight or 80 — look at a beluga whale,” he said earlier this week.
“Kids stand there slack-jawed. They can watch all the videos, but they won’t have that reaction. So, we’ve lost a tremendous tool in our quest for ocean literacy.”
He went on to say, “My frustration with animal-rights activists is that they have not done a darn thing to help global oceans become more sustainable or better places. All they focus on is one animal at a time.”
Even as the controversy roiled along, Nightingale spearheaded multimillion-dollar expansions to house larger numbers of cetaceans. He refocused attention on B.C. with the Wild West Coast gallery and its magical displays of jellyfish. He led the drive to establish Whytecliffe Park marine protected area in West Vancouver and to restore a salmon stream in Stanley Park.
Under his leadership, there’s now more emphasis on research including world-leading work on how belugas communicate, as well as on the origin and prevalence of microplastics in the world’s oceans including the Arctic and Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica.
On the business side, Nightingale courted controversy by creating for-profit subsidiaries that — among other things — helped create a Las Vegas hotel’s shark exhibit and now manage Europe’s largest aquarium L’Oceanografic in Valencia, Spain on a long-term contract.
Nightingale — and yes, he is a distant relative of the famous nurse — came intending to stay no more than five years.
Born in Colorado, raised in Oregon, the fisheries biologist earned his doctorate at the University of Washington. But he came here from New York where he’d been associate director of the aquarium that is now called the Wildlife Conservation Society.
There, he hobnobbed at blacktie events with high-profile directors who included actors Glenn Close and Tony Randall.
Vancouver was a chance to return to the West Coast. But Nightingale also figured it was only a stepping stone to something bigger.
“The one thing that I didn’t bargain on was the great extended family of board members, former board members, volunteers and former volunteers that has only grown more robust over the years.”
And it’s that extended family — the people, not the work — that Nightingale singles out as the highlight of his career.