Blog

The Seattle Aquarium may not be open to the public during these challenging times, but we wanted to take a moment to bring our amazing animals to you. This week we’re featuring some of our furry favorites—the sea otters! Check out our weekly schedule of activities and engagement opportunities to learn more as we all stay at home and practice social distancing.

We’re all doing our part to help fight the spread of COVID-19 by practicing social distancing—which means the Aquarium is currently closed to the public. But even if you can’t come to the Aquarium, our dedicated staff are hard at work to bring the Aquarium to you!

I hope, first and foremost, that you are taking care of yourself and your loved ones during these unprecedented and difficult times. The closure of the Aquarium due to the COVID-19 crisis has been painful for the Aquarium staff, volunteers and board, our passionate members and supporters, and for me personally.

My heart goes out to each of you as we navigate this moment in history that has brought our great city to a standstill.

The Seattle Aquarium Connections program

The Connections program is a product of the Aquarium’s aim to be inclusive and welcoming to all. With your support, the program distributed over 84,000 complimentary admission tickets to more than 350 partner agencies in 2019 alone. It also offers low-cost memberships to audiences served by these agencies and provides outreach programming to many of them as well.

Please enjoy these highlights and quotes from just a few of the organizations we’ve partnered with across the community!

Divers are a big part of the Aquarium experience—they chat with guests during daily shows and can often be spotted working inside our exhibits—but did you know that many of these people are volunteers? The Aquarium is extremely fortunate to have a crew of approximately 100 volunteer divers, and we’re always looking for more!

We asked two volunteer divers to talk with us about why they love diving at the Aquarium, and what keeps them coming back: Jim Middleton has been volunteering with us for over 27 years and has racked more than 10,000 hours of service; Carina Martin relocated to Seattle a couple years ago and has been an active volunteer ever since.

Ned and Susan are strong believers in the importance of conservation and education, and have been active Aquarium supporters since 2004. “We especially value the experiences that the Aquarium offers youth,” says Susan. Adds Ned, “Yes, we’ve always been impressed with the many school buses lined up along Alaskan Way—bringing kids from all around the region to learn and explore at the Aquarium.”

First of all: What is an alcid? It’s a type of seabird that’s a member of the auk family and breeds in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere. The Aquarium’s Bird & Shores exhibit is home to several of these black-and-white diving seabirds with short necks: guillemots, murres, auklets and puffins.

Studies have shown that the communities least responsible for environmental degradation most often take the brunt of it.

Other studies demonstrate a lack of diversity in conservation organizations—and a “green ceiling” effect means that the diversity that does exist is primarily at the entry level and decreases at higher (managerial and executive) levels.

The Seattle Aquarium is working to address both of these issues with its new empathy fellowship program: Facilitated by the newly created position of empathy fellowship coordinator, three empathy fellows will join our staff early this year.

For 50 years, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has helped prevent damage to the environment and protect the health and welfare of people. NEPA was passed by Congress a year after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which had disastrous consequences for marine life. Since then, NEPA has been a powerful tool in ensuring that actions taken by federal agencies—including licensing and permitting projects—are closely reviewed and regulated based on sound science so as to not cause severe harm to the environment.

How many giant Pacific octopuses live in Puget Sound? It’s a question we hear frequently at the Seattle Aquarium’s Life of a Drifter exhibit. And in 2000, we set out to try and answer this common query with a survey and have continued every year since.

Just in time for Octopus Week, we bring you a typical day in the life of a giant Pacific octopus (GPO) in our care!

Every fall, rivers and streams throughout Washington state welcome back five different Pacific salmon species—Chinook, coho, chum, pink and sockeye—that call these waters home. These heroic fish have been on a long journey that took them from the rivers where they were born to the open ocean and back again to create the next generation and continue the cycle.