Monterey Bay Aquarium Major deep sea animal exhibit coming to MBA

Local_Shark said:
It would just be a shame to eliminate such a revolutionary and really fun exhibit. There really is nothing like it anywhere else in the United States. I hope that they decide ultimately to just keep it around for good, I think they would find it very economically worthwhile to do so and it would continue to educate all manner of visitors about such a little-understood environment.
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Good news since it's an answer from someone in the department, I asked Matt Wandell about the longevity of the exhibit (husbandry operations project manager) and he says it's currently "up in the air" about if ITD will become a permanent exhibit, which I mean hey that's better than saying it's still a temporary exhibit. Probably why all of the wording on the website at least was changed from "Special Exhibition" to just "Exhibit" like the other staple exhibits. Fingers crossed they pull through. Agreed, even though they've said the technology they're using for ITD is open book for other aquariums to use it, but even then, no other aquarium really has the ROV collection privileges or even the geographic privileges of being right next to one of the deepest submarine canyons in North America that they can go and freely collect from.

DaLilFishie said:
Perhaps MBA should get in touch with Aquamarine Fukushima! Aquamarine also keeps quite a few snailfish species (which I believe they collect mostly from Hokkaido and further north), so some collaboration between the two facilities would be interesting!
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I also asked him this; "I'm assuming this is far from the last Snailfish species you guys would be working with, super stoked to see what next. I'm not sure if you guys collab with Aquamarine Fukushima but I saw they have a pretty diverse Snailfish collection, if you guys are able to exhibit Barred Snailfish (Crystallias matsushimae), that would be pretty cool" and he said "Not enough collab!" which can be interpreted anyway (he has to be intentionally vague to not leak anything+technically isn't on the aquarist/ husbandry management side) but I think this means they've collaborated before, just not as much as they'd like to? Not totally sure but "not enough" must at least mean they've done it before. Hopefully they can work together again
 
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Northwest_FIsh_Keeping said:
Good news since it's an answer from someone in the department, I asked Matt Wandell about the longevity of the exhibit (husbandry operations project manager) and he says it's currently "up in the air" about if ITD will become a permanent exhibit, which I mean hey that's better than saying it's still a temporary exhibit. Probably why all of the wording on the website at least was changed from "Special Exhibition" to just "Exhibit" like the other staple exhibits. Fingers crossed they pull through. Agreed, even though they've said the technology they're using for ITD is open book for other aquariums to use it, but even then, no other aquarium really has the ROV collection privileges or even the geographic privileges of being right next to one of the deepest submarine canyons in North America that they can go and freely collect from.

I also asked him this; "I'm assuming this is far from the last Snailfish species you guys would be working with, super stoked to see what next. I'm not sure if you guys collab with Aquamarine Fukushima but I saw they have a pretty diverse Snailfish collection, if you guys are able to exhibit Barred Snailfish (Crystallias matsushimae), that would be pretty cool" and he said "Not enough collab!" which can be interpreted anyway (he has to be intentionally vague to not leak anything+technically isn't on the aquarist/ husbandry management side) but I think this means they've collaborated before, just not as much as they'd like to? Not totally sure but "not enough" must at least mean they've done it before. Hopefully they can work together again
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That is great to hear for sure! And hey, since you have this line of communication with Mr. Wandell…if you could possibly float our elasmobranch recommendations his way and see what he might say about them, that would be very very deeply appreciated…;)
 
Local_Shark said:
That is great to hear for sure! And hey, since you have this line of communication with Mr. Wandell…if you could possibly float our elasmobranch recommendations his way and see what he might say about them, that would be very very deeply appreciated…;)
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I could definitely try and ask, what sucks is I did have the line of communication with the Husbandry Operations Director who's more in tune with the oversight of the collection but sadly (like most of the MBA staff who used to be active in the MBA discord server), hasn't been active in years on there. He was the one who gave me the tour of the midwater room + early access to ITD so I'm sure if I managed to find a way to reach out again, I could ask for his insight too. I'll have to find a way to try..
 
Potentially something to take note of, some of the Husbandary team (both exhibit operations and animal care) are currently in Japan right now according to some of what they've been posting. Haven't seen or heard of any Aquarium visits yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they came back with some new stuff for ITD. We'll just have to wait and see it looks like (could also potentially be that this is for "Ocean in Motion" next year since the exhibit operations staff is also on the trip, but I don't think that's the case)
 
Northwest_FIsh_Keeping said:
Potentially something to take note of, some of the Husbandary team (both exhibit operations and animal care) are currently in Japan right now according to some of what they've been posting. Haven't seen or heard of any Aquarium visits yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they came back with some new stuff for ITD. We'll just have to wait and see it looks like (could also potentially be that this is for "Ocean in Motion" next year since the exhibit operations staff is also on the trip, but I don't think that's the case)
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What's Ocean in Motion?
 
DaLilFishie said:
What's Ocean in Motion?
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The new exhibit that's essentially replacing the Children's area (opening late next year). They're still having it lean towards Children's stuff with playgrounds and things like that, but they're expanding the Penguin exhibit and the Tropical spaces so they're adding brand new Tropical exhibits and bringing back species from past exhibits that were popular with the public (Pot-bellied Seahorse, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, and Garden Eels are the 3 confirmed ones so far). I posted a bit about it in the main MBA thread, but those + a 30ft long 5/6k gallon Reef tank is also confirmed. They should be revealing more in a member's livestream this Saturday I'm going to try and catch but it should be pretty sweet since while it will be focused more on children again, the species selection should be sick for adults too
 
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