by Noella Noelophile®
“Lou”, the sea turtle, was putting on a show.
“I can’t believe this,” commented Aquarium of the Pacific Curator of Fish and Invertebrates Nate Jaros. “Generally, he’s just napping.”
But perhaps Lou had sensed that Thursday was a special day in Long Beach. 
That morning, the Aquarium launched its 20th-anniversary celebration!
And seeing a sea turtle up close, swimming back and forth and all but posing for closeups, was a great “anniversary gift” for Aquarium guests.
Many more special events were in store that morning–and will be waiting to welcome visitors, as Aquarium of the Pacific continues its celebration throughout this summer.
Summertime guests will get to meet some new residents in a brand-new cephalopod exhibit, “Tentacles and Ink“.
They’ll also get to work with the Aquarium in conservation efforts, see an award-winning new movie, participate in special contests and find out more about the Aquarium’s history and original animals.
On Thursday morning, guests had a great opportunity to learn that history.
“This is a significant milestone for the Aquarium,” said Aquarium President and CEO Dr. Jerry Schubel. “Over the last twenty years, we’ve worked very hard to create an organization dedicated to…nature and nature services…(and) the interactions between and among people.”
Dr. Schubel said the Aquarium’s past twenty years had included a number of industry “firsts”.
Among these were the breeding of animals such as the giant sea bass, and the development of award-winning, globally-available educational programs.
In addition, he said, the Aquarium’s audio-visual team had won more than three dozen international Telly awards for their short films. Those honors, he added, included four just-announced ones for their latest film, The Time is Now, the Future is Here.
“Today, the Aquarium of the Pacific is the fourth-most-attended aquarium in the country,” Dr. Schubel said. “And when we open (our new wing) Pacific Visions (in 2019), I think we’ll be the second-most-attended.”
Next, Dr. Schubel introduced “the visionary mayor who made this all possible”: former Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill, who served from 1994 to 2006.
Looking back–and forward
Sharing the background of the Aquarium, Mayor O’Neill harked back to its start during “a bad time for the City of Long Beach” in 1998.
“The Navy (as our largest revenue source, had left the City of Long Beach after sixty years),” she said. “(I was part of a group that) got together and said, ‘what can we do with this land, that’s going to enhance the city for the future?'”
“…We looked at other waterfronts. We looked at other plans. The Aquarium was the answer.”
“Jim Hankla was the City Manager, and we got together and came up with a list of people that were really outstanding in the community…and we asked them to help develop (the Aquarium).””Jim Gray was the first chair. And so Jim Hankla and Jim Gray went to Washington to ensure that we would be able to get the funding…because we had never done anything like this.
“They did find that there were sources of funding for it,…and in two years, we had the Aquarium.”
“And I must say, I can’t tell you the impact it’s had on our community. It’s impacted classrooms,…libraries, even the hospitals, the museums…the number of people that volunteer from the community just gets bigger all the time.”
Mayor O’Neill also said the Aquarium’s yearly attendance had climbed to one-point-seven million visitors. And she offered a look forward at the Aquarium’s new “Pacific Visions” wing, set to open in 2019, and the way she foresaw it enhancing the communtiy.
“I think it will be the cornerstone for study, for conservation….and (for realizing the impact humanity has on our oceans).”
Starting with the basics
Dr. Schubel highlighted some additional ways in which the Aquarium has enhanced the Long Beach community.
“I’ve been here now for sixteen of those twenty years,” he said, “and when we arrived, there wasn’t a single restaurant. There wasn’t a single retail outlet between here and the Convention Center…So an awful lot has happened during that period of time.”
After reading congratulatory messages from former Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster and current Mayor Robert Garcia, Dr. Schubel introduced the Aquarium’s Vice-President of Animal Husbandry, Dr. Sandy Trautwein, who has been with the Aquarium “since before it opened”.
“For me personally, it’s been a great privilege to be part of that original team, that helped open the Aquarium and design the original exhibits,” Dr. Trautwein said.
“Back in February of 1997, when I arrived at the Aquarium, I just saw a shell of a building, and it was surrounded by dirt. And in fact, that dirt quickly turned to mud that year, as we experienced one of the most intense El Nino storms ever.”
“So it was quite challenging for us to open, but we donned our boots and hard hats and continued to push forward to open (the Aquarium) on time, on June 20, 1998.”
Dr. Trautwein told the audience that, over those twenty years, the Aquarium of the Pacific had become a world-class leader in both education and conservation.
Among the conservation projects in which the Aquarium is involved, she continued, is the recovery of endangered species, like the white abalone.
“And at the base of all these activities, of course, are our animals. So today we’re here to celebrate our charter animals.” (“Charter animals”, one staffer explained, are animals which have been at the Aquarium since it opened.)
Our tour of the Aquarium, shortly afterwards, revealed plenty of reasons to celebrate.
“We have two pairs of tufted puffins, which are the ones that are all black with the fancy plumes on their heads,” explained Aquarium of the Pacific’s Senior Aviculturist Karen Anderson. “We do have another kind of puffin, that’s the horned puffin.”
Karen said nesting puffins lay “one great big egg”, and the parents trade off, incubating it.
“The puffin’s egg is so big, they incubate it under a wing.”
Meanwhile, in the sea otter habitat, “Charlie” and “Brooke” were holding court. Nate explained that they’re the two oldest Southern sea otters. Both are “originals” at the Aquarium, Nate said: they were orphaned young and came to the Aquarium through a rehab program.
Brooke will celebrate her twenty-first birthday in a few weeks. Charlie is twenty-one–and the Aquarium just received word that he’ll soon be in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living sea otter.
“Doris” the day octopus was another highlight of our tour. 
Currently, she’s the star of the Aquarium’s new cephalopod exhibit, “Tentacles and Ink”. At about a pound and three quarters, Nate said, she’s not yet full-sized. “They’ve been known to get up to about five pounds.”
“Over the course of the summer, this exhibit will highlight different species of cephalopod,” explained Senior Aquarist Kylie Love. “This octopus is really unique, in the fact that they like to be active during the day. That’s where they get their name from.”
(And in fact, the Aquarium’s brand-new giant Pacific octopus mascot, “Gigi”, has now come on board in celebration of their newest exhibit!)
As previously mentioned, “Lou” was a favorite highlight of the tour. His appearance elicited oohs and aahs from the crowd outside his exhibit.
And Lou had an interesting story. He was given to the Aquarium as an egg, said one Aquarium staffer. The Fishery Service, in Texas, confiscated sea turtle eggs which someone had been trying to smuggle into the U.S. Those eggs were donated to the Aquarium. So Lou, who is around twenty years old, has lived there all his life.
Nate told the tour group that Lou came with a companion. Initially, Nate said, Aquarium staff named the two young turtles “Thelma and Louise”.
:”It’s kind of hard to tell when they’re younger, but when they’re older, the boys’ tails are much long. And as they got a little older, their tails just got a little bit too big, to be females,” he said.
So, the new denizens became Lou and Theo.
2018’s new addition
And, speaking of a new resident…
Just in time for the Aquarium’s anniversary, “Shelby”, the harbor seal, has a new arrival.
Her new pup is just over a month old, having been born on April 20th, said Mammalogist Sarah Larsen.
“She doesn’t have a name yet, so we are still allowing people to vote on it online,” Sarah said.
“But Shelby, her mother, is actually really special. She’s one of our charter animals, she’s twenty-two years old, and this is her third pup. “
Sarah said the pup was gaining weight rapidly. “They generally only nurse for about four to six weeks. She isn’t really eating fish yet, so she just comes up and kind of hangs out.”
And if you would like to “hang out” and celebrate the Aquarium of the Pacific’s 20th anniversary with Shelby, Lou, Doris and all kinds of other incredible sea creatures, they’ll be waiting to welcome you–all summer long.
Aquarium of the Pacific, at 100 Aquarium Way in Long Beach, is celebrating its 20th anniversary with summer contests, special programs, new animals, an art exhibit, a conservation challenge and a daily short film shown at intervals in the Great Hall. The celebration continues from now through Monday, September 3, 2018. Aquarium hours are 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, daily. Here’s the link for information.