New Exhibit: Our Living Coastline

Brooke Hernandez joins us today to discuss Our Living Coastline, the Aquarium's newest touch exhibit! Get the inside scoop on how this immersive, accessible habitat came to life and why it’s a must-see.

Acronym Key:

• OLC: Our Living Coastline
• GPO: Giant Pacific octopus
• AOP: Aquarium of the Pacific
• AZA: Association of Zoos and Aquariums

Episode resources:

• ⁠Transcript⁠
• Follow ⁠@podcific⁠ on Instagram!
• Email us at [e-mail]
• Learn more about Our Living Coastline
• Brooke’s Rockfish Survey Trip + Vlog
• Crab Construction

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Hi, I'm Aaron Lundy. And I'm Madeline Walden, and
this is Aquarium. Of the pod civic.
A podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific,
Southern California's largest aquarium.
Join us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care,
conservation and more. Welcome back to Aquarium of the
Pod Civic. I'm Aaron Lundy, the Aquarium's

(00:26):
Conservation Initiatives manager, and I am joined by my
Co host. Madeline Walden, I am the
Aquarium digital content and community manager and today we
are talking about our very exciting new exhibit, our Living
Coastline. It is a new touch habitat that
is outdoors. It took the place of the ray
pool. It's out on California Terrace
and there are Penguins and our seals and sea lions.
But don't worry, there's still rays that you can touch at the

(00:48):
aquarium. People are very concerned.
And our bat rays we talked aboutin this episode.
But don't worry, the bat rays are just fine.
They are now in our Honda blue cavern habitat.
And I will say that several times in this episode because we
have big fans of are bat rays, but I think you're going to be
those fans are going to eventually become fans of this
new habitat because it's really cool.
It is pretty cool. Our ray habitat and ray touch

(01:10):
pool area was pretty neat, and Ido admit that I sometimes miss
seeing those giant bat rays right outside of the seal and
sea lion feeds. But I will say that the
silhouette of our living coastline, which is our new
exhibit that's taken its place, is beautiful.
And I feel like it's been such an improvement and it really
makes the aesthetics of the aquarium much improved, which I
know it's not what we're prioritizing, but is certainly a

(01:33):
huge component of why I think it's become so popular already.
There's tons of invertebrates. It is a touch area.
People are very happy to discover that there is a new
touch pool, but it's a really cool habitat.
We're going to be talking to Brooke today and she is the
primary keeper for this exhibit and was a huge part of kind of
creating this habitat and getting all of the animals in.
And she now manages almost 1000 animals that live in our living

(01:55):
coastline. Just 1000.
Just casually, no big deal. Is on a previous episode of
Aquarium of the Podcific. You may recognize her from our
octopus episode because she alsooverseas our giant Pacific
octopus habitat. That was the day I brought a
cricket into the recording studio.
I. Forgot about.
That it was in my. Shirt I think I got in oh, it's

(02:17):
in there OK, good good I've. Heard it recently and I was
like, Oh yeah, there's a bug on me and Brooke was someone to
point it out. While we were, she's a real one,
she's a real 1. So we're happy to have her back.
She's also working a lot of other cool things outside of
this new habitat. So we're going to learn all
about what's happening in BrooksWorld.
A Brooke update. Spoiler alert, it's crab
prosthetics. Hang out for a little bit if you

(02:40):
want to hear more about crab prosthetics because that
honestly is fascinating in and of itself.
But we have got a packed full episode, just like we've got a
packed full OLC, our living coastline full of invertebrates,
just like our episode today. Welcome back to Aquarium of the

(03:01):
Podcific. Today we have on Aquarius Brooke
Hernandez reoccurring guest. Fan favorite Fan favorite?
You guys are too sweet. Well, we're really excited
because Brooke has overseen the construction of our newest
exhibit, our Living Coastline. It's a new touch exhibit out on
California Terrace near our seals and sea lions, and it took

(03:22):
the place of our rate pool. So we'll talk about where the
raise went. I know people are very
interested in knowing that, but welcome Brooke back to the
podcast. Hi, thank you guys so much for
having me. OK, first of all, what is our
living coastline? What is the exhibit?
So our living coastline is basically a little bit of the
old coastal corner, but maxed out.
So instead of having like 10 to maybe you know, 12 feet of touch

(03:45):
area, we've actually got over 60feet wow of area for guests to
touch. It's a completely immersive
exhibit and it's a huge upgrade to the area.
Yeah, it's beautiful. The lighting at night is so nice
too, Like it's just a gorgeous exhibit.
Oh yeah, it was, it was made absolutely spectacular.
I mean, we went all out for it. It was definitely something that
I think our our facility is going to benefit from greatly.

(04:07):
And it's a touch exhibit, right?Yes.
So it is a an invertebrate touchtank.
So we've got everything from ourguests, from the stars, cedar
trends, cucumbers, you name it. We've got about 40 species and
over 900 animals in the exhibit.Species in there.
There are 40 species in there and over 900 animals and.
Kelly Oh, I didn't even realize.It's like almost as much as in

(04:29):
Tropical reef, our largest exhibit.
Yes. And counting is also crazy
because it is packed full of animals, but it is so full of
life and such a dynamic exhibit that it is cool to see it and
also see this sort of silhouetteof it.
It is a major aesthetics improvement to the ray touch
area. No offense to the Rays, but time
for a time for an upgrade. Cosmetic upgrade.

(04:50):
Speaking of the rays, before we get into it, where are they?
People want to know where the rays.
Went We don't want people to be panic.
Beautiful bat rays. Some of them are charter
animals. They've been here since we
opened in 1998. Yes, all of our beautiful rays
are doing well. I believe they're in Blue
Cavern. Now they're not on the blue
cavern habitat. Now they look very beautiful in
there too. So you can't touch them anymore.

(05:11):
But we do have rays you can touch still a charcoal lagoon
and then we have this beautiful new touch habitat too, so.
And still any rays in this exhibit.
Yeah, so we actually do have twolittle round rays in this
exhibit. They're in the sandy pool in the
middle. That particular area is no
touch. The entire rest of the tank is.
But those guys are in there and they're pretty cute.
You can see them when they're not burying, although one of

(05:33):
them's got like a favorite spot pressed right up against the
window, you know? What?
I just remembered that a guest the other day stopped me and was
like, that animal is so cute, what is that?
And it was just a little round Ray pressed up against the
acrylic, and he was it. They look like they're smiling
at all times when you see the bottom of a ray and there's a
little. It's really cute.
He just got his little butt right up against the acrylic,

(05:53):
like a lot of times it. Is their butt.
Yeah. And it's like for this field, we
have a challenge where we want to make exhibits where the
animals want to be in places where guests can see them.
And like challenge accepted by him, he sits there all day.
He eats tons of food. Like he's a he's a good boy,
that one. And then I know our Sturgeon was
a fan favorite. He's behind the scenes right

(06:14):
now, right? Yeah, yes, we haven't behind the
scenes. I'm not sure of what the future
plans are for him. Might be another exhibit for us,
might be another facility. We'll we'll kind of see.
We'll. See, we'll keep everybody
updated. What species live in our living
coastline? So where to begin?
For starters, you've got tons ofa kind of derms and to kind of
help out everybody on the podcast exactly that might not

(06:34):
be super familiar. A kind of derm basically stands
for spiny skin. That's going to be animals that
have spiny skin and tube feet. So that's going to be things
like your urchins, your starfishand even some of your cucumbers
as well. In addition to that population,
we've also got tons of mollusks which are basically soft bodied
and muscular footed. So that's going to be things

(06:55):
like that's me or. I was going to say I have spiky
skin sometimes so we can really.I have the soft body and
muscular fiend so. I'll take the next one then, but
that's going to be, you've got Limpids in there, you've got
Kellet's Welks in there, and my favorite are Gumboot Kite.
And so those are just a basically a giant sea slug in
there that are super cool. I love their name.

(07:17):
I discovered them the other day.Gumboot.
Gumboot kiten? Gumboot Kiten?
Why are they gumboots? Is it the texture of them?
You know, I have no idea, but they're just like, they're super
big and they're gorgeous and they move so slow and they're
just, there's something about them that even though they don't
really have a face, like they'restill very lovable.
I understand that Gumboot Kiten.It's my new Halloween costume

(07:40):
this year. I'm a gumboot, Kiten.
Yeah, you wouldn't. In addition to a lot of those
critters, we've also got tons ofcrustaceans.
That's gonna be your things, like your crabs.
We've got an extra extra large lobster and they're probably the
biggest lobster anyones ever seen.
His first name is Orange and hislast name is Orange, also

(08:02):
Orange. Orange.
Orange. Orange.
If you see him, he is in the window on sort of the backside
of the exhibit, closer to where the shore bird habitat is, and
he lives in there and he is absolutely massive.
How big is that lobster? A huge, I mean, he's, he's like
the size of a dog. It's really crazy how big this
lobster got. He's actually in there.

(08:23):
We call it his penthouse. That's really cuz behavior wise,
he wasn't really fit for society.
Some of the fun parts about working in this field is you
have to manage a lot of dynamicsof different animals.
And he was hoarding all of the lobster ladies from all of his
friends. So yeah, we went ahead and had
to give him his own penthouse suite, as we call it.

(08:45):
So he has had no. Ladies right now.
No, no ladies for him to kidnap and hoard.
Orange, orange, what a dog, literally the size of a dog and
acts like a dog. So he now lives in OLC in sort
of that big window. He literally is the first thing
I look for every time I go up toOLC and I.
Didn't even know he had a lobster in there.

(09:05):
He's. Huge.
He hides really well. I'm actually going to be jumping
in there later this week and setting up a cave for him that's
more like front and center, so hopefully we can kind of coax
him to come out. Spot to hide and you should see.
This lobster, he's impressive. He crawls backwards, like up
into that little space. It's crazy.
Lobsters. Are so cool.
I didn't realize we had to manage lobster social dynamics
here at the aquarium. Yes, big, big part of my job, so

(09:29):
they pay me the big bucks. Add it to my resume.
Lobster babysitter management, yes.
So we have crustaceans, we have gumboot Titans, we have our
echinoderm, so the madeleines ofthe world, the spiky skins, and
we have mollusks, the mes of theworld, soft body, muscular spawn
feet, very strong feet. So how do these animals all sort

(09:51):
of live together? Is it meant to sort of mimic a
coastal habitat? Would these animals normally all
be found in the same place, or is this sort of an artificial
thing that you'd see it in aquarium?
That's exactly what it's supposed to do.
It's supposed to mimic the natural environment.
So the like tidal area is a super dynamic and important part
of our ecosystem because you have such a diverse group of

(10:12):
animals there. You're going to have everything
from snails, worms, urchin star,so many different animals all in
the same little area. And it's because it's a, it's a
critical place. Not only do all of the rocks and
the structure and the algae act as like a nursery, but they also
act as a place is that cycles nutrients.
So there's just so much that's so important about our

(10:32):
intertidal zone and it's really nice.
It's been really fun working this tank to be able to kind of
watch that play out in real time.
Like it's very much So what an actual tide pool area looks
like. Do you see a lot of animal
animal interactions between the different species?
Oh, absolutely. It's constant.
I mean, you've they're all sharing the same space.
They all climb all over each other, steal food from each

(10:54):
other. You know, we're currently having
an algae grow in. We believe it to be Macrocystis,
the giant kelp all over the exhibit, and the urchins are
eating it. So it's like everything's really
very natural. That's.
Pretty cool. I know a question that we get a
lot is how we acquire animals, and I think this exhibit in
particular is a really, really cool story.
Can you talk a little bit about how we acquired the animals in

(11:15):
the habitat? Oh, absolutely.
So for starters, we did a lot ofcollecting locally.
So here at the aquarium we have our field OPS team and we went
out to Long Beach break wall andthat's where we got a ton of our
urchins and cucumbers. In addition, we did different
algae collections via tide pulling.
In addition, we also had some generous donation.
The researcher went ahead and donated over 300 of our hermit

(11:35):
crabs in the exhibit, which was awesome.
Thank you for your German crabs.He was doing a ton of
conservation and like research with them in the past.
I don't know about this particular one, but in the past,
because I've worked with them, when they've done things with
GPO, they would ask me to give asample of water that the GPO had

(11:57):
been in and then they would put it in the water with the hermit
crabs and they would see like what their cortisol levels did
and things like that. Fascinating.
I don't know if that was this specific one, but in the past
that's what I've seen them do with hermit crabs.
It's pretty cool, but you never really think about sort of the
silliness that goes into some ofthe research that is done.
And having that many hermit crabs is mildly silly, but we

(12:18):
appreciate. That it shouldn't be silly,
yeah. Science is often silly.
We'll get to, at the end, kind of some very exciting and very
interesting stuff that Brooke isdoing that's also a little
silly. It's very silly.
I love it. We'll talk a little bit more
about that at the end. I have a question.
So when you say that we've gone out collecting to the Long Beach
Break ball, what does that look like?
Do you get to participate in actually going out and

(12:40):
collecting animals? Yes.
So we for starters, we work closely with Fish and Wildlife.
So we have permits, they have certain allotted numbers of
animals we can have. So let's make sure that we know
we would never, but that us or any other facility aren't going
to ever harm the environment or complete the environment of
anything necessary. But yeah, I'm part of our field
diving team. A lot of our Aquarius are

(13:00):
actually a part of our field diving team.
So that means I come in early one day and Don a wet suit and
go out on a boat and they drop us in and we collect.
We know whatever it is, we're there to collect that day.
Even cooler was actually how we got the majority of our stars
and an enemies that are out at our Living Coastline right now.
And that's that we actually sentA-Team up to Washington to

(13:21):
collect because the our Living Coastline exhibit is 52 to 54°
roughly. It's supposed to embody the
Northern Pacific. So a lot of the animals that
would are that you see on that exhibit aren't local to hear
that we could just go out and collect.
So we actually sent A-Team up toWashington for several days in
order to collect all these animals because it's not as

(13:43):
simple as going out there and grabbing animals.
We have to do tons of permitting.
Washington has been a popular destination for us this year.
Up. There Washington this year.
My goodness. So I was in Washington and
Canada for a bit this year. Yeah, I know I'm getting spoiled
by OP lately to participate withthe young of the year rockfish

(14:03):
surveys. And for anyone who basically
doesn't know, young of the year is meant to describe like
animals within their first year of life.
So what we did up there was we basically took surveys of
various habitats to see how manyyoung of the year or baby
rockfish were around. And the reason like that kind of
thing matters is because rockfish are a great indicator

(14:23):
species. They're a great way of knowing
how healthy an ecosystem is and like how thriving an environment
is. So being able to locate their
juveniles and say there's plentyof them or others, not very much
of them is like really critical information.
And they use that stuff when they determine things to be like
marine protected areas and stufflike that.
So basically they want the data to back it up.

(14:44):
So we were part of a team that went up there for about a week
and dove. I think we dove 10 or 12 sites
and wow, took surveys. That's pretty cool.
You also vlogged the whole thing.
Yes, and it's on our YouTube channel.
All included in the show notes with some more information.
It's a really great video. You can see, I think you guys
just watching you and putting that footage together, hauling

(15:05):
the equipment up and down, and you guys are just awesome.
So it's a really cool video to see how much work goes into
doing these amazing surveys. Yeah, it was.
They sent us up for the Young ofthe year stuff.
The collection team got to go inMay, I think it was, or March or
somewhere a little bit later or they were a little warmer.
They sent us for Young of the Year right in the middle of like

(15:26):
smack dab February and we absolutely froze.
I was going to say, there's something about the aquarium
that loves to put Brooke in charge of the most cold habitat,
and maybe it's just because you have such a great attitude about
I. Think they're testing me?
I think they want to see how farthey can push me.
But as you know from Brooks previous episode of Podsific

(15:48):
Brooke overseas or giant PacificOctopus habitat which is the
coldest exhibit we have at the aquarium?
How cold is it 40? Seven degrees 47.
Degrees today. Today and then, how cold is our
living? Coastline Our living coastlines
between 52 and 54. So it's pretty.
Chilly. Yeah.
And I think it's interesting that we have such a cold touch
exhibit because guests are not expecting that.

(16:09):
No, it's really cold. It encourages short, gentle
touches and then removing your hands because it's so cold.
Because you physically can't keep your hand in any longer.
And why is the water so cold in our living coastline?
I mean, like I said earlier, these animals are from
Washington. I mean they're collected from
Washington. They are Northern Pacific
animals. So that is just the temperature

(16:30):
that they are most comfortable in.
Like could we crank it up a bit for our guests?
Sure. But at the end of the day, those
animals, that is their environment, that's their home.
And we're going to do you know what we need to do to make them
as comfortable as possible. So love our guests, but we love
our animals a little more. Just a little.
Just a little, just by air. It has been like 95° in Long
Beach the last couple weeks. So how are we keeping our living

(16:53):
coastline at 52 when it is outdoors in the sun and it is
90° outside? I mean, we have chillers on all
things, but our life support team here is phenomenal.
They're always on their A game. They, they do such a good job
with all of our exhibits. So the chillers are definitely,
you know, doing the Lord's work up there.
But you know, they're, they're ahuge part of that.
They're working. Hard for sure.

(17:14):
Yeah, our life support team and we did interview read from life
support at one point, but they basically they run the aquarium
for lack of a better word. Any filtration, any sort of
equipment that might be associated with animals and
their habitats and their exhibits like temperatures,
stability, their flow rate, the filtration all is sort of
managed by our life support department.

(17:34):
And so it is really beneficial for us to have an entire
department that helps to orchestrate those things and let
us know when something is maybe going wrong so that we can
address those issues too. And they do a lot of work,
especially trying to chill in the middle of summer upstairs.
But it is pretty, pretty cool. When we were setting up, I
remember there being a long period of time of sort of

(17:55):
flushing the system, getting everything going.
And then, you know, the concretework.
I think it takes a really long time for an exhibit to be ready
to receive animals. Like we need very stable water
parameters. We need to achieve sort of this
like perfect stasis of everything is not going to
change the rock works, not goingto Leech anything out.
And So what does that process look like from the person

(18:17):
setting up an exhibit that large?
Long and difficult. That process is not easy at all.
I mean, you're thinking about every single piece of material
that you're not only putting in the tank, but that has ever
touched the tank or been near the tank has the propensity to
possibly leach. In addition, a lot of times I
joke with people that I don't actually keep animals, I keep

(18:39):
water. Is the happier the water?
Is the happier the animals? Exactly.
So it's like a lot. There's a whole chemistry for
people who maybe aren't, you know, hobbyists that have tanks
at home. There's a whole chemistry, a
whole biological cycle, basically, a balance of good and
bad bacteria that you have to maintain in water in order to
keep life in it, essentially. And starting that cycle can be

(19:02):
incredibly difficult, especially.
When it's 52°. Yes.
So the colder kind of the water is, the colder things grow, the
colder the good and bad bacteriagrow, so the longer the cycle
takes. So it's crazy.
It's definitely a test on all ofour patients trying to get it up
to speed because you know you can't add any animals really
till you get certain parameters cycled properly.

(19:24):
Animals are always #1. Yeah, animals are #1.
That always has to take precedent over US putting
animals in or having a, you know, a good showing for
something. We have to make sure that the
animal health and welfare is addressed first and foremost.
And so maybe it took a slightly bit longer to get animals into
OLC, but that was because we wanted to make sure everything
was absolutely safe for those animals. 100% that's one of the

(19:44):
reasons why I just love working here, because I've seen time and
time again that the animal welfare comes first.
I would love to touch on you guys.
Both oversaw construction, now two years back-to-back
similarities between, you know, maintaining the Frog Gallery and
and the construction of it and OLC.
So you guys can commiserate a little.
Bit yeah, two years ago, we two years ago, my goodness, last

(20:09):
year we renovated our amphibian gallery for the tropical Pacific
area. And it looks beautiful and I
love the result of it. But I will say that the process
of going through a renovation will test you like nothing else
because everything you are familiar with and every practice
that you have just as muscle memory of, like I know where
this animal lives, I know what'sgoing on.

(20:30):
Everything is stable, is different.
And that in and of itself is very jarring.
In addition to the fact that there's construction everywhere,
there's jackhammering at no at all times for no reason.
I don't know how we could possibly have so many things to
jackhammer, but it feels like it's weeks of jackhammering
non-stop. And then it's just like random.
Everything's dusty, everything'sa little bit dirty because it's

(20:51):
construction and so there's a lot of people in your space.
And at the end of the day, everyone actually worked really,
really well together to make theAmphibian Gallery what it is.
And it is so cool to see the result.
But those few months of just everything being dust?
So challenged prior to the animals going on exhibit.
Yes, no dusty animals. Animals were all in holding
spaces and we had a really greatteam that was able to maintain

(21:15):
great health and welfare for animals while they were in the
holding spaces. Every animal that went into
holding came back out of holdingand was able to be exhibited,
which is pretty cool to say. But there was a lot going on.
And, you know, one of the systems that we ordered turned
out to be way too small. And I was like, well, our
Sonoran Desert toad is not goingto fit into this exhibit.
And so there is a little bit of pivoting that has to be done

(21:35):
when those little hiccups come up.
And I feel like that probably happens every single year for
every gallery renovation. And then I got to sit back and
watch you guys go through it. Here lucky, it did feel like a
lot. But you tell us how it went.
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty much exactly as you described.
In addition to that, like all none of our job, because we work

(21:56):
with live animals, it doesn't just stop.
So I still have all of my other exhibits and all of my other
animals that need to be cared for as well as an entire, you
know, system we're trying to open.
And like Aaron was saying, it's like you're used to things are
stable and like easy and you don't have to really think about
them. And all the sudden you're having
to think about every choice you make.
Like, would this belong here? Does this go here?
And it's for weeks on end, months on end, really.

(22:19):
So like I said, like kind of wasAaron was saying how everyone
pulled together. That's absolutely it.
It's a great opportunity for a gallery to come together and
really help and support one another during the construction
of OLC, right at, you know, the 9th hour where it's the most
physical and the most things need to be done.
I was actually on crutches. So I was making it harder.
Yeah. So I was not as helpful as I was

(22:42):
hoping to me. And I owe a ton of gratitude to
my entire gallery team and even our management team.
Everybody really steps stepped up because, you know, the person
who's getting the exhibit is supposed to be doing the most
and the most, you know, involved.
And I obviously was hobbling around so incapacitated.
Yeah, yes, I'm OK. It was, like I said, a lot of

(23:03):
work, very exhausting, but definitely worth it.
And it was amazing to see the whole team, managers included,
all pulled together like that. I have a very distinct memory of
Brooke sort of towards the end and as we were getting ready for
the VIP opening and she was moving animals from holding to
the exhibit so that we could be ready for this like big VIP
member opening that we were having.

(23:23):
And the animals that were most stable and most appropriate to
go in at the time were just a bunch of urchins. 500 urchins,
not a bunch 5. 100 hundreds of urchins, and I just remember
Brooke sitting on a stool acclimating the urchins and it
was just buckets and buckets andbuckets and buckets of urchins
and urchins. And so I got to babysit some
urchins for Brooke to take a little break at 1:00.

(23:45):
Point, it was super great fun. Like I said, I owe so much
gratitude Aaron with the Erchin Sophia at one point brought us
all ice cream on one summer day while we were working in there.
And I'm telling you, man, that Bush pop was like the
difference. It saved us that made the
exhibit happen. It literally did.
We were. We were all very much so, yeah,

(24:06):
pretty much. But it is very gratifying to see
the results at the end of it. And Amy, do do you guys want to
speak on why we update exhibits at the aquarium?
Why not just leave it? For amphibians, a lot of the
infrastructure that we had had in place was sort of meant to be
temporary. It was always supposed to be a
gallery. That wasn't permanent.
And I don't think that we had had plans to keep a large
collection of amphibians for a long time.

(24:27):
Mine and a bunch of other people's enthusiasm for the
frogs has sort of changed that. And our desire to highlight
Manuela legged frogs as a conservation project meant that
we were likely to be keeping amphibians here for a while.
And so with the idea that we were going to keep things more
permanent. So I really like how it came out
and I think it is beautiful. And it is also slightly more up

(24:47):
to date information for educational messaging and things
like that because. Previously, those were all water
habitats in our Frog Gallery. Yeah, they were all actually
different Aquarius systems. I think that the two large
systems in the middle used to becoral tanks.
And I'm trying to, I think we had put Solomon Island Lefrogs
and Panamanian golden frogs in them respectively.
And then all of the other systems were either they didn't

(25:10):
exist before or they were meant to be an aquatic for Ray touch
pool. Why did we want to update the
Ray Touch pool area? So for a lot of reasons, I think
the two main ones was a huge improvement to animal welfare
and a huge improvement to guest experience.
I think those were the two really driving factors behind
for animal welfare. We want to kind of lead the

(25:30):
field when it comes to animal welfare.
So while all of our things are great and Arizona is cool with
them and that's awesome, we wantto be even better than that.
So we wanted to create an environment where the these
animals have choice and control.They're able to choose if they
want to be near the touch area or choose to retreat as they
desire additionally to their areas that are non touch.

(25:52):
So we're able to move animals togive them breaks from touch.
And we really wanted to just kind of have that be the driving
forces, the animals. In addition to that, to improve
guest experience, we wanted to have a space that was big enough
to accommodate everybody. We wanted to have an area that's
more open that our guests can come touch that you know is
better for our educators. They can reach our guests
easier, talk to them easier, have better messaging.

(26:14):
So it was just overall really the, the animal welfare and the
guest improvement were the huge things that we're driving.
Yeah, this renovation. I think something that I've
noticed so much more with the way our living coastline is laid
out is the guest accessibility is significantly improved
especially compared to coastal corner and even to the rate
touch pool as it was before. And I think what's doubly cool

(26:34):
about that is the rocky intertitle, especially in
Washington where it is freezing cold, is probably not the most
accessible habitat for most people to get to.
And so it's really cool to have something that is so
representative of what that habitat looks like, but to have
it be something that guests can get really close to and
experience up close and personal, rather than being
like, hey, I might never have anopportunity to go to Washington

(26:57):
and look on the tide pools. And even if I did, my toes would
freeze. So here, your toes stay warm and
you get to be in the California sun.
It's, it's really cool to see that we are able to bring
something that is so inaccessible to most people to
our guests here in California. Oh.
Absolutely. And that was a huge part of, you
know, I was a part of a lot of our discussions when we started
kind of talking about this exhibit and planning.

(27:19):
And we brought in our staff fromother departments as well, our
educators, our life support teamin order to discuss like how we
wanted to go about this. And a big thing for us was
accessibility. We want to make sure that all of
our guests have access to the animals, that all of our guests
can enjoy this experience because like you said, tide pool
areas typically aren't ADA compliant.

(27:40):
So to be able to provide that opportunity to someone who
otherwise might not have it, I think is a really special and
unique opportunity. And I'm, I'm proud to be part of
a company that, you know, reallyhighlighted that and made that
so important. Definitely, it's such a big part
of our mission is and really thegoal of the aquarium is to bring
you to fall in love with these animals and realize that they

(28:01):
have these counterparts in the wild and all these things that
you can do to care for their counterparts in the wild.
And sea stars specifically have been facing a very difficult
time in our oceans. And what better way to educate
and fall in love with an animal than it is to literally be able
to touch it, feel it, learn about it on the spot.
And so that's really the goal with all of our habitats and and

(28:21):
the goal of this one as well. Sophia showed me the coolest sea
star I've ever I've seen in my life and it looks like a pink
and blue gummy worm, sort of, and I don't remember what she
called it. But the Stimson.
'S yes it's the stimson * and she had pointed it out and she
was like, there's only two in here.
So if you see it and if you see a gummy worm looking sea star.

(28:42):
There are more than two. Well, at the time before she
lied to me. No, no, she probably just didn't
know. Like I said, I've been I add
animals every single week. I have not stopped adding
animals since we opened so those.
Are cool and they do look like the pink and blue gummy worm.
Oh, they're beautiful. In addition, an important
clarification, because I have heard this a lot from guests,

(29:02):
they are not sunflower sea stars.
They are sun stars. We do not have sunflower sea
stars for our guests to touch. Sunflower sea stars are
critically endangered. The ones we have, we have some
very young ones that we're rearing behind the scenes and
we're so excited because there'sbeen so much conservation work
revolving them. We.
Take care of all of our animals,but we want to make sure that

(29:22):
every animal that is especially important to a species survival
effectively because these guys are some of very few that live
under human care and are probably going to be sort of
founders for future generations of sea stars.
Absolutely. Those guys get VIP.
Treatment, yes, but you can see them in our Rocky Reef exhibit.
We've got a beautiful display. We've got one on display and

(29:44):
lots of cute, lots of content too.
Really. Really.
Cute. He's a baby, right?
Oh, he's. So Little, So Cute talked a
little bit about that with in our episode with Johanna, our
last episode. If you find one of those gummy
worms stars, Aaron will come outand give you a gummy worm.
Yeah, I'll appear out of nowhereto give you a gummy.
I'm going to collect all like 20of them tomorrow.

(30:05):
I actually live. In the penthouse with orange,
orange and I will come out and give you a gummy worm if you
find the Stimson star. Well, he was also hiding and so
you would think something pink and blue in that exhibit would
be very easy to find, but he wasunder a rock.
Well, it's. It's hard to find anything in
that exhibit right now with how much the macro algae has taken
off, which is cool. Really.
So. Exciting.

(30:26):
Not a direct goal, no right? But it just happened.
Inadvertently grew the macrocystis.
So one of the things that cold water Aquarius, like if you get
really good, you can grow live algae.
So it's something we all work really hard to keep live algae,
like actually grow it, sustain it, get new, grow things like
that. So we work incredibly hard to be

(30:47):
able to do that. I want to talk about the flow in
the So there is a tide flood every two minutes in the
exhibit. Yes.
Why? What is that?
What? Why we do?
That what is that? What is that?
Yes. So about every two minutes
you'll see waves crashing down from the top and they'll go all
throughout the exhibit. And that's because it's meant to

(31:07):
replicate the inner tidal. So the inner tidal is basically
the barrier between land and sea.
It's where you're going to get that high relief, tons of wave
action. And we want to make sure that we
emulate these animals environments environment.
So we want to give them what they would be seeing out if they
were in the wild in order so that they thrive.
So we basically have every two minutes a tidal crashing wave

(31:28):
come through and do exactly as it would do out in their
environment. And I mean that right there is
why you see the taking off of the different algaes in there.
We haven't planted any algae that we were planning to try to
grow right now and it's just taking off so.
It's a really cool looking surgeeffect when it's so effectively
a tank of behind the scenes fills up with the water that is

(31:50):
then going to be the quote UN quote wave that comes crashing
down. And I have this very distinct
memory of before we had animals in it.
But as we were sort of getting the surge just right of the day
that it was like we just startedit of our CEO, John Rouse coming
up to the entire team who just fed the Seals and sea lions and
being like, guys, you got to watch this walk us over.

(32:11):
And it must have just happened because it was 2 minutes of us
staring at and he was like it's coming.
And he said it's coming. It's coming and I just really, I
don't know what I'm supposed to be watching for, like I don't
know. And then as soon as it starts
happening, it is really cool. Like you hear it's awesome.
The sound, the waves are crashing down.
You get a little splashed because it's it's pretty
refreshing to be honest, especially right now.

(32:32):
He it was such a funny 2 minutesof us being like what is
happening right? Just smiling.
And then we got. It at the end of the day, but
yeah, it was really cool. It's so funny because when I'm
like working on the tank and I want the flow to come, whether
it's because I'm feeding or something, it feels like the
longest 2 minutes of my life. But when I'm working on the tank
and I need the flow to stop so Ican see what I'm doing, it feels

(32:53):
like it's just constant. It's like, it's amazing how 2
minutes can either be the longest or shortest time of your
life. Does that impact how you feed
the? Animals, I try to use it to my
advantage truthfully. So obviously when it comes to
feed, everybody's going to get like exactly what they need and
for every animal it's different.So like for instance, you've got
some of our animals are more eating of like algaes or tritis.

(33:15):
That's going to be things like your cucumbers or your urchins
or your chitons, you know, depending on different species,
what kind of things they will enjoy.
We also go ahead and feed a ton of cut mix that's going to be
chopping of shrimp, clam, you know, you mussels, you name it.
And that's going to be like for our meat eaters, like our stars
and some of our anemones. But in addition to that, we have

(33:37):
some anemones that are what are called, what are called filter
feeders. So they're basically they're
like a Matridium that require a ton of little, tiny little
pieces of food. So for them, I'll go ahead and
fill all of the upper pools withthings called copepods or like
frozen mice's, which are basically just teeny tiny little
feeding pieces that you can barely see in the water.

(33:57):
And then I'll let that natural tide wave action slowly kind of
drip bucket them into the exhibit over the course of the
day. That a way they're constantly
being fed that and they're constantly, you know, because
that's going to be what they would find in their natural
environment. And I'm sure it's enriching,
too, to just have like, these things in the water column
exactly the way that they would find it in a tide pool in the
ocean, just kind of appearing like food.

(34:20):
Oh exactly. It works out really nicely to
have such a dynamic exhibit because everybody is enriched by
one another and one another's processes.
Like I feed a piece of kelp to an urchin and even though a
starfish may not eat that, they still get to interact with it.
And same with, like, the meat that might go to the starfish,
the urchins will still grab it and put it on their.
They're like, what is this? Yeah, they wear a little, little

(34:41):
shrimp hats sometimes. And it's like all of the animals
end up interacting with each other.
I have decorator crabs that sit in the algae and make little
hats for themselves. And, like, everybody interacts a
lot. And everybody's feeds end up
basically enriching one another,even if the feed isn't meant for
them specifically. You can have a shrimp hat.
I want a shrimp hat. I just think it's fascinating to

(35:02):
try and feed 900 different animals at the same time.
I know you can relate to that urine feeding.
I feed a lot of tadpoles, but they're easy because you just
make like an algae plate and youput it down and then they find
it. I don't have to spread the algae
all over the exhibit and wait for a wave to disperse it to all
the tadpoles. But it certainly is challenging.
And that's only one species thatI take care of at a time, not 6

(35:25):
billion species. So it's overseen.
Do we know how many? How many species exactly are in
the system? I think it's 37 is what's in our
tracks, but I do believe we've added a few more and I haven't
updated, which is why I said about 40 species is what I'm
estimating. And then in terms of quantity of
animals. 900 plus times. 900 andcounting.

(35:47):
And yeah, so 900 is like the minimum.
I think we're closer to like, I don't want to like, say, a
number that's not real, but I think we're closer to like 1200.
And my goodness, do they think, do you think that they all
reproduce in that exhibit? Oh, I'm sure they are.
They are, yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, happy.
Animals like to reproduce. I'm sure they are already
trying. The great part is too.
But like I said, it's such a dynamic and like it's so

(36:09):
accurate to the natural world because like if something lays
eggs and other thing will come up and probably eat them and
that's super enriching for both animals to have that experience,
so. That is pretty cool.
How many gallons are in the exhibit?
It is an 8000 gallon exhibit roughly.
And what is? Your favorite animal that lives
in this exhibit My. Favorite.
Individual and species in case they're different.

(36:33):
I mean currently my favorite animal is the green urchins
because they never have any problems.
Honestly, I love the stable animal.
Yeah, they're like, we love you,Brooke.
We'll never do anything bad. Never pulled out a green urchin
for any reason after they put them in and they're and they're
doing great and that is why they're.
Unproblematic. Well, the animals that live in a

(36:55):
intertidal area are going to be slightly hardier animals almost
in general anyway. Absolutely.
They have to be out of water, inwater, splashed by water, hit a
rock and everything. It's, it is exactly why they're
the perfect animal for a touch exhibit, because they are the
hard, hardiest of the hardiest. I mean, they are in a tide pool
that will just lose water all ofa sudden and they'll sit in that

(37:16):
pool and it gets hot or it gets cold and then the water comes
back and like you said, thrashedagainst the rocks.
Like you've got to be very Hardyto make it in the intertidal
zone, which is why they make theperfect touch animals for our
guests. Green urchins, are they green?
Yeah, they're light green. The prettiest urchins we just
added this week. Actually, I added eight fragile
pink urchins and they're they'relike light pink.

(37:38):
They're really pretty. I'm.
Gonna go up there after this. We're gonna look at pink
urchins. Now they're super pretty.
My favorite individual. I love myself a difficult
animal. I know you do I.
Love myself a a problem child. Brooke diving with a GPO and
unzipping her boot and stealing off her tools.
Tattoo Orange. Orange.

(37:59):
Yeah, Orange. I'm gonna say I probably like
individually. I really like orange Orange.
You're a dog person, and he's the size of a dog, so it makes
sense. Monster.
Yeah. I mean, you should go see him.
I can't believe you haven't seenhim yet.
I know. Massive.
Well in fairness I only see him like once a week.
He only comes out when I'm feeding him so.
That's fair. I told a kid that there was a
giant lobster in there once and he got very excited and then sat

(38:22):
there the entire time looking for it and wouldn't be.
And I felt really bad for the parents because he was one of
those days. It was like 95° outside and the
parents were like can we go? Inside and.
Here's a huge lobster. I have to see it.
And I was like, I don't know if you'll ever be.
Able to see it. So I don't know how long they
were there, and if you're listening, I'm really sorry.
So if you don't see Orange Orange on your first trip around

(38:43):
the aquarium, head back to our Living Cosine and look again and
I'll be there. Like I said, I'll be diving the
exhibit later this week, creating him a cave that's in,
playing sight and hoping he chooses that instead of his, you
know, cave he's chosen now. So hopefully by the time this
comes out he'll just be out all the time.
But. Orange Orange Exhibit This is
the orange right next to orange orange window.

(39:05):
We literally call it his penthouse.
It's. Pretty nice in there.
If I was a lobster, I would livein.
There I mean. Except not with him.
It was really a huge blessing because like I said, a huge part
of our job job here is managing dynamics of animals.
And sometimes you just end up with a problem child.
Like you just end up with an animal that cannot be housed
with other animals because they're bullies or like, you

(39:26):
know, they hoard the women. You end up with these challenges
and these animals that, you know, you're trying to find a
space for where they're not going to hurt anyone, but they
still have a a good life then, you know, and proper welfare.
So to have that exhibit pop up and have a place that is a
wonderful for him, a perfect environment for a lobster, while
also not putting any other animals in danger or bothering

(39:48):
any other animals with such a blessing.
When? When?
A total win. I feel like we need an episode
just on the problem children. Oh my God, garibaldi #1.
I think that the most relatable experience to me is like, you
will have an animal that you know is sort of an issue, but
you're like, maybe it's fine. Maybe everything's going to be
OK. And just waking up in the middle
of the night worried about a crab or worried about a frog and
like, is he doing OK? Yeah, I had an experience a

(40:12):
couple days ago where I woke up at 2:00 AM worried about one
specific frog. And I was awake until I came
into work and went and looked athim totally fine doing nothing.
And I was like, I've been thinking about you for five
hours. That's.
Why? You guys are the best people to
be in your position. You truly care about these
animals like you're like, never.Asleep, but thank you for

(40:32):
answering all your questions, all our questions.
I have a question for you, Aaron.
Alongside our Stars of the Sea rollout, which included this new
exhibit, our Living Comes Fine, we also updated shore birds a
little bit. Do you want to talk about shore
birds? Yeah.
So we have a shore bird habitat.The habitat itself got a little
bit of a facelift, but honestly the biggest part and the biggest
improvement was that we changed our sort of outward facing mesh

(40:54):
that the animals were previouslyhas behind to this beautiful
thick acrylic window. It's.
So nice, it's. So gorgeous.
You can see the birds really well.
We have not had any issues with the birds flying into the
window. We have had guests ask about
that because it's a lot clearer now.
But they do have an understanding and they can see
the acrylic and we have not had issues with that.
But our rescued shore birds livethere, and I am finding out

(41:15):
every day more and more about the individual shore birds we
have. Our Grieb came in to us because
he only has one wing, and he went through rehab.
And they're like, well, you can't fly because he only has
the one. And so Griebes are often pretty
aquatic animals. And so you will never see a
Grieb flying around the habitat,but you will see him swimming
like a little frog, which is cute.

(41:36):
His name is either Rio or Mr. Grieb, depending on who you ask.
And then Gladys is my favorite animal in the whole exhibit.
Yeah, she is our white faced Ibis.
She came from International BirdRescue in San Pedro a couple of
years ago, and she is so cute. She's like sort of an iridescent
green, brown color with just theslightest bit of white feathers
around her beak during breeding season.

(41:57):
So visit Gladys, which is also ahilarious name for a bird, and
Rio and Mr. Greeb, and come lookat our new shore bird habitat.
It's pretty cool. Birds love it and they are
already doing all the things that they are supposed to be
doing in there, so it's cool to see.
Amazing. OK, we have a couple of
questions from social media. We got one out of the way
immediately, which was where thebatteries and the sturgeon which

(42:18):
are currently, like we said, batteries are in our Honda Blue
cavern habitat. Sturgeon is behind the scenes.
Another hard hitting question ishow many sea cucumbers do we
have in our habitat? How much time do you have Let's.
Count. Let's go up there and count.
I don't know off the top of my head.
I know I just added fifty more like 2 weeks ago so.
Over. 50 is how many? So many.

(42:39):
Somebody really likes. How many I?
Plan. They're cool.
I don't know that we had a ton when we opened.
Do we have different? Species of sea cucumbers in
there we. Do we have a giant Red Sea
cucumbers which are giant and red, so they're very easy to.
Just how they get the name, so Iknow it's a mystery.
And then we have the wardy sea cucumbers, which are, they're

(43:02):
kind of like a brownish orange and they're a little bit smaller
and little. In GPO too.
Yes, I have both species in GPO and in coastal corner.
Will there be more animals to touch in the future?
Oh, constantly. Like I said, every single week.
Like if I went through this journal I have here of all the
stuff, every week it's like I added 200 of this, I added

(43:23):
another 20 of this, I added another 10 of this.
Like every week we're adding animals.
We've got a great exhibit now, but we've got a lot we want to
do to really take it to that next level.
And then another great question is if you had to turn into any
animal from the new exhibit, which would you turn into?
Orange. Orange.
I'm thinking about Orange, Orange because he's got like the
penthouse. He's all by himself.

(43:46):
But I actually think I might go with like one of the one of the
we have some round rays. They're so.
Cute and like the ability to bury under the sand and have no
one sees me Sounds really good. The Aquarius vacation.
The Aquarius group by trade tendto be a very introverted, you
know, we work with animals all day, so we tend to be a little

(44:06):
more quiet. So Barry Anderson.
Sanderson sand. It sounds nice.
It's. Sort of an ongoing joke that the
bird, mammal, amphibian team is all extroverts and all of the
Aquarius and invertebrate keepers are introverts and
fitting. It's honestly not too far.
No, it's pretty accurate. Brooke is also working on
outside of OLC, which we keep referring to also there I keep
saying things in acronyms. GPO is giant.

(44:28):
Pacific OCC is our living coastline.
This new exhibit. Yes, sorry, it's hard not to
talk and like. Field ARP talk, which is
Aquarium of the Pacific. Yes, I kept saying AOP, that's
my fault. I think if you listen to this
podcast, you probably know at this point AOP is short for
Aquarium of the Pacific. And if not, welcome, welcome.
How do we protect our touch exhibits from things that

(44:49):
happened overnight? We have herons, we have
seagulls. These are potentially prey items
for animals like that. How do we protect?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
That's definitely a huge thing we have to consider anytime we
have outdoor tanks. For us, the our Living Coastline
exhibit is actually tarped off every single night.
So when we close, we have massive tarps that go over the

(45:10):
entire rock work of the area. And that's in order to have a
barrier because like Madeline was saying, we've got tons of
predators out there for those animals.
The birds are very smart and very aggressive.
Big tarps go on every evening byour life support support crew,
so shout out to them on that andthen in the mornings I take off
those tarps myself with some of my volunteers and some of our

(45:33):
very willing and lovely staff members who helped me so.
Ripping out the blankets in the morning.
Rise and shine. Yes, it's a ton of work.
I think there's plans in the future to get like an
all-encompassing netting so we don't have to tarp things off
every night. But for now, the animal welfare
and animal safety first, we makesure that they're all tarped up.
But besides everything else you're doing with this new

(45:56):
exhibit, what else are you working on behind the scenes?
I know you've been doing some stuff with crabs lately.
That's really exciting. Yes.
So I have a bunch of really kindof random niche little projects
that float down my way. One of them recently, I just got
back from presenting about at the regional Aquatics workshop,
and that was for making prosthetics for crabs, which is

(46:18):
cute. That sounds insane.
Really. Cute.
This is a silly thing that I mentioned earlier in the
episode, but it's actually not so silly.
It's really important. Yeah.
So crabs, especially in human care will sometimes get
something called shell rot. And it's basically like damage
to their exterior skeleton, which is basically their shell.

(46:38):
But in human care where molting is less frequent, that shell rot
can get really degenerative. And there's basically it's a
problem industry wide. So not just here at AOP that we
deal with. Our industry as a whole has this
challenge where we basically, basically when once a crab gets
shell wrought, it's degenerativeand it's incurable as it'll

(46:58):
basically penetrate through their heart exoskeleton into
their soft underbody and that tissue till it would basically
kill them. So our vet staff led by Doctor
Lance Adams, absolutely genius. I've loved working with him.
He's, he's so talented, but he basically led the charge that
what if we could go in and physically remove the diseased

(47:21):
portion of the shell. And then that would basically
leave a big hole in our crab shell, which would be bad for
their health and also bad for their display appearances for
our guests. So I went ahead and created
custom castings in order to makecustom prosthetics of their
shell so that we could basicallyaffix that to their open portion
of their shell and it would workin two parts.

(47:42):
It would basically act as an A option to protect that soft
underbody from potential predators, including their own
tank mates, because crabs are monsters.
But in addition, it would also when we use adhesives and
epoxies to affect that prosthetic, it could kind of
neutralize the oxygen rich environment that that disease

(48:03):
really loves to grow. So we could at least, you know,
if we couldn't completely eradicate it, we could at least
slow it down South. I've been making prosthetics for
crabs for the last couple months.
And it's really cool to see. We've made a couple.
Well, we've made one video aboutit.
It's we're due for an update. We got to do an update on that,
but it's we'll include that in the show now.
It's a link to that. And also you can listen to our

(48:24):
podcast episode about crabs withMelissa Fischer, one of our
Aquarius. One of the things that was
really cool about it is that I know that you had mentioned
crabs will kind of pick at each other if anyone has a weird spot
on them. And so in order to not just have
it be covered and sort of look like a shell, this is detailed
work that Brooke is painting theprosthetics to match the crabs
exactly. You would never know that this

(48:46):
crab had a prosthetic. Like, if I ever need a
prosthetic, I want you to designit for me because you can't tell
that these crabs have had anything going on with them.
It is the exact color and like texture and shape and the same
amount of spikes as you would expect.
For that tested, yeah, I know Brooke's done a lot of work to.
Just crazy because. Paint changes color when you put
it underwater, so something thatis one color while you're

(49:08):
working on it behind the scenes of the immediately you put it
underwater, it just. The crabs will know.
I can't even tell you that I thought when I did this that,
you know, the hard part would bemaking a custom prosthetic or
having it attached to the crab. I was expecting these to be the
really big difficult challenges,getting the color to match.
Like I'm an artist outside of here, I know color theory.

(49:29):
Like I totally understand that getting the color to match
especially. Underwater is crazy.
Like that's so different. Was the most frustrating thing
I've ever done because you just like work on the crab and then
put it in the tank. And you know, we're not, we're
not working on the crabs often. We're trying to do it as
sparingly as possible. So we're not bothering them.
You know, we're making sure thatwe're keeping them, you know,

(49:49):
happy and healthy and all that. So I only get one shot to match
this color maybe every six months.
To put a crab having a tank and have that color not match was
just I wanted to like scream in my pillow at night.
That was also keeping you at night.
Yeah, that was definitely keeping me.
You mailed it. We finally yeah, finally.
It took a minute but we finally figured out the the trick to it

(50:10):
but. And if you're here, you might
see a crab that has a custom prosthetic and you wouldn't even
know. What else are you working?
On I'm kind of have like AI don't want to speak it into
existence because I don't want to jinx it, but I have like a
little breather between projects.
So I'm looking into a lot of 3D modeling for 3D printing.
We want to see if we can basically take kind of this crab

(50:32):
prosthetic project and utilize the next level of 3D modeling
and printing in order to not only improve our animals like
health and welfare, but also things like enrichment devices,
tools. So I'm currently in the process
of teaching myself how to use some of those programs.
I am not super tech savvy so I imagine it will be a long and

(50:53):
slow process for me to kind of catch up to speed with that, but
we want to see how we can betterutilize that in our field here.
Brooke is brilliant, so I have no doubt that you're going to
have something really amazing toshare with us.
Next time you come on the podcast, you'll have to update
us on all the cool stuff you're working on.
Oh. Absolutely, yeah.
Thanks so much for being here. Oh yeah, thank you guys for
having me. Everyone needs to come check out

(51:14):
Brooks new exhibit, Our Living Coastline.
Aquarium of the Pod Civic is brought to you by Aquarium of
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Keep up with the aquarium on social media at Aquarium Pacific
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(51:35):
This podcast is produced by Aaron Lundy and Madeline Walden.
Our music is by Andrew Reitzema and our podcast art is by Brandy
Kenny. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher,
Anita Vias, our audio, visual and education departments, and
our amazing podcast guests for taking time out of their day to
talk about the important work that they do.
Podsific is impossible without the support of the Aquarium's
donors, members, guests and supporters.

(51:57):
Thanks so much for listening.