Monterey Bay Aquarium to reopen
Call it a golden opportuna-ty for ocean lovers.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of Northern California’s top visitor attractions, will reopen in May, 14 months after it closed due to the COVID pandemic.
The facility draws roughly 2 million visitors a year to Monterey’s Cannery Row to see exhibits of pulsating jellyfish, frolicking sea otters, waddling penguins, and cruising sharks.
The aquarium will reopen to members only for two weeks starting May 1, and then to the general public on Saturday May 15. Admission for members and the general public will be by advance reservation only at the aquarium’s website, w w w.montereybayaquarium.org
“We are super excited about having people back in the building,” said Julie Packard, the aquarium’s executive director. “It’s not just right to have the building be empty.”
During the pandemic, with no visitors, the aquarium suffered a major financial setback. To offset $55 million in losses over the past year, aquarium managers laid off about 40% of their staff of about 560 people to conserve enough money to continue to properly care for the animals and maintain the facilities.
Packard said the animals are doing well. They have been fed and cared for just as before.
“There’s no way to ask them,” she said. “But it would appear they are thriving. The ones that have a lot of human interaction like the sea otters and the penguins, they are very excited and interested whenever you are in the building and come up to them.”
Most other zoos and aquariums around California and the United States — including the California Academy of Sciences, Aquarium of the Bay and San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, the Oakland Zoo and Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose — already have re-opened.
COVID case rates have been higher in Monterey County than in many other Northern California counties in part because of outbreaks of the virus among Salinas Valley farmworker communities. As a result, Monterey County only entered the red tier on March 17. That tier allows zoos and aquariums to reopen indoor facilities at up to 25% capacity.
Packard said when Monterey County moves into the orange tier, which allows 50% indoor capacity, the aquarium will expand the number of visitors allowed in.
Aquariums around the country have been sharing information about best health practices for months. Most are operating at about 40% to 60% capacity, said Dan Ashe, president and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Worldwide, zoos and aquariums have lost $2 billion in the pandemic, he said.
“A lot of them have had to burn through their reserves. They have laid off thousands of employees,” said Ashe, who served as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Obama administration. “But now if they want to be open, they are able to be open. The availability of vaccines is raising optimism about 2021 that we’ll start to see increasing normalcy. We’re optimistic. People are ready to venture out again.”
The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in 1984 after a $55 million gift from tech pioneer David Packard, cofounder of Hewlett Packard, and his wife, Lucile.
It is often ranked among the world’s best aquariums, and in recent years has focused on not just displaying the animals that live in Monterey Bay, but on teaching the public about threats to the environment and the world’s oceans, including climate change, plastic pollution and overfishing.
“I’m overjoyed it’s reopening,” said Ashe, a marine biologist. “Monterey Bay Aquarium plays such an outsized role in terms of ocean conservation and inspiring young people, and helping the citizenry become engaged and aware of ocean conservation. It’s just a treasure for the state, the local economy and the world.”
At first, the aquarium will be open Thursdays through Mondays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and will be closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Seven-day-a-week operations will resume May 29.
Every visitor age 3 and older will be required to wear a mask to enter. So will employees and volunteers. For visitors who forget, masks will be for sale. No standing in line at the ticket window will be allowed.
Tickets will be sold on a timed-entry basis, in blocks of 30 minutes, to keep visitor numbers to about 25% of normal or less. Reservations will become available online at 9 a.m. Pacific time on April 26 for members and May 5 for general public admission.