The public aquarium exists with zoos, symphonies, art museums and professional sports teams as a mark of civic achievement. While they, like zoos, are sites of animal display, aquariums are a newer creation. As a technological development, the aquarium grew out of the same technology that made possible London's Crystal Palace and developed as an institution during the great age of expositions in the late 1800s. Through a brief review of the history of these institutions and a case study of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I will show how they were created out of widely held values, developed through the techniques of consumer display, and in turn helped to shape our values again through these display strategies.

According to the New England Aquarium's Aquarium History, the first public aquariums were shown during London's Great Exhibition of 1851.^¹ While the Crystal Palace was the main attraction in Hyde Park, the public aquarium displays were located in Regent Park and featured the same technology of glass in iron frames. Concurrently, aquatic displays existed at Dublin's Zoological Gardens. These attractions were made possible not only by modern construction technology, but also by the recent discovery that fish could be kept alive in tanks of water by keeping plants in the water for oxygen and snails to keep the water clean.

The displays of fish in ornate iron frames must have been spectacular to visitors of the early 1850s. These displays marked the first time people could get a sectional view of the underwater world. Prior to these displays, fish were something most people either encountered out of the water either while fishing or at the market. While humans had raised fish throughout history, particularly in Chinese and Japanese cultures, they had always been viewed through the surface of the water. Seeing fish at eye level, displayed like works of art, was a new experience.

The aquariums made its first public appearance in the United States via the great showman P.T. Barnum. After losing his American Museum in 1856 after a series of bad investments, Barnum bought a number of glass aquariums from the Royal Zoological Society while traveling in London. He brought them back and set them up the first public “Aquaria” in the country, and within a few years had taken over the Boston Aquarial Gardens.^² According to Aquarium History, Barnum wasted little time in turning the Aquarial Gardens into a veritable circus: sideshow acts from Tom Thumb to the Albino family reigned, with the actual exhibits forming a mere backdrop. On February 14, 1864 Barnum closed the Gardens and moved the remaining exhibits to his American Museum.

While the zoo has long done away with using animals as performers within a circus-like atmosphere, the sideshow aspect of the aquarium persists to the present day in many instances. Performing seal acts were an attraction in the 1800s and continue to be one today, particularly at marine parks like Sea World. Over the course of the twentieth century, the aquarium became more common throughout the United States and Canada, and in many ways began to reflect the trends that were taking hold in zoos. The educational mission came to the forefront in most cases, and displays were set up to reflect the animals' natural habitats.

While animal rights have advanced significantly over the past century, it is interesting to see that fish are usually excluded from the discussion. In Paul Shepard's book The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (1996), fish are mentioned in one paragraph of his 374 page book. His book serves to describe the vitality of the animal world in the human search for meaning. By leaving aquatic animals out of this construction of “otherness”, we are led to believe that fish are the other within the other.

Shepard is not alone in his disregard of aquatic life. Even in Peter Singer's groundbreaking book on animal rights, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, fish are mentioned sparingly. Singer sets up a scale of vegetarianism where it is first necessary to give up factory farmed meat, followed by giving up all meat from mammals and birds. He then goes on to say “How far down the evolutionary scale should we go? Shall we eat fish? What about shrimps? Oysters?”^³ He comes to the conclusion that it is wrong to eat fish because they feel pain and factory fishing is harmful to ecosystems, but it is okay to eat mollusks (except for octopi) noting that “some place between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most.” ^⁴

In his discussion of eating fish, Singer also notes that “those who continue to eat fish while refusing to eat other animals have taken a major step away from speciesism; but those who eat neither have gone one step further.”^⁵ To me, this identifies Singer's own speciesist tendencies against fish through the incorporation of a Darwinist construction of the animal world. Chapter six of Animal Liberation, titled “Speciesism Today” fails to mention fish, although it does mention herds, flocks, leghold traps, factory farms and hunting.

Very little has been written about the cross species relationship between humans and fish. In most literature, fish are treated primarily as a food product. In western society, the practice of eating fish is central to the New Testament of the Bible. Christ associates with fisherman, and the Pope of the Catholic Church continues to wear the “Fisherman's Ring” named so after the first pope, the fisherman St. Peter. While the aquarium brought fish to eye level during the 19^th Century, centuries worth of ingrained cultural bias prevents people from incorporating fish within the community of animals worthy of “rights.”

In her article Animals, Science, and Spectacle in the City Kay Anderson organizes zoo history into chronological periods based on the history of display methodologies. She catagorizes this history in the period of menagerie-style cages (1878-1930), followed by a period that lasted until the end of World War II that viewed presented the zoo as a fairground. (Anderson 35). Following this period is the “modernizing period” which Anderson describes as “ecological theatre” but could be described differently in different scenarios. In general, the modern period of zoo design is one of naturalistic settings and mixed species within exhibits, as opposed to singular cages with single animal species that existed earlier. This is the period where zoos have redefined their image and claim to exist for educational and scientific reasons alone. Anderson describes the director of the London zoo defending his role in “the breeding and conserving of endangered species.” ^⁶

While these historical periods are vital to an understanding of the changing nature of animal display over the past two centuries, it is important to recognize that the aquarium has not followed the same pattern as the zoo in many instances. Anderson describes the zoo as being a “hybrid space of the cultural and natural where combined knowledges, products, images and experiences of both artificial and natural derivation.”^⁷ Other “hybrid spaces” she mentions include natural history museums, gardens, parks, nurseries and wild animal reserves. I would argue that the aquarium does not fit into this definition of a “hybrid space” because it does not represent an interface of culture and nature, because the nature within it is so highly constructed. If the exhibits at the zoo were opened to the outside world, the animals could roam freely into the space defined for humans. Conversely, the fish in the aquarium can not leave their constructed environments without facing suffocation. There is a clear delineation between the animal spaces and those set aside for humans that can not be bridged without technological mediation (i.e. scuba gear, panes of glass etc.).

Because the aquarium is a different type of “hybrid space” from those described by Anderson, it is not dependent on its surroundings to the extent to which the zoo is. While a zoo typically needs a large piece of parkland to exist, the aquarium can be located almost anywhere. Looking at the example of San Francisco, the Steinhart Aquarium in the city's Golden Gate Park was scheduled to close to accommodate the renovation of its outdated facility. In order to ensure continuous operation, the exhibits were moved to a vacant first floor space of a building downtown next to the convention center. Now, it is possible to buy discount shoes, eat dinner at Buca de Beppo's (an Italian restaurant franchise) and visit the aquarium within the space of one block.

A more extreme example is that of Underwater World at the Mall of America. Considered the largest indoor mall in North America, this structure contains not only the largest collection of retail establishments but also a small amusement park and a public aquarium. Much like the San Francisco example, it is possible to buy shoes, eat dinner and then pay $14.95 (or $8.95 for children) to enjoy the world's longest underwater tunnel.^⁸ This aquarium also has the world's largest freshwater exhibit and allows visitors to experience swimming with eight species of shark at the aptly-named 500,000 gallon exhibit named “Shark Cove”. A recent episode of Animal Planet Extreme Zoo (March 11, 2004) billed this as a “very real and dangerous adventure,” despite the fact that it was taking place in the highly controlled environment of the mall.

To look deeper in to the functioning of the aquarium in American society, I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California. It is one of the largest aquariums in the United States, and is the central attraction in Monterey. This aquarium dominates the Cannery Row area of the city as it terminates the axis of the main street and has a commanding visual presence of the waterfront. While it originally focused solely on the marine life native to central California, the collection has expanded slightly over the years to include a number of other popular animals including black-footed penguins and tropical fish. My visit in late March, 2005 happened to coincide with the final week of display of a young Great White Shark. This attraction significantly boosted attendance during the time of my visit.

Before describing the exhibits within, it is necessary to understand the history of this aquarium. As a pet project of David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard fame, the aquarium came into being through the vision of its chief donors. Packard sought to establish a permanent presence for the Hopkins Marine Lab, an oceanic lab run by Stanford University and the aquarium was spun off as a new institution. The aquarium opened in 1984 to much fanfare, at that time the largest exhibit was the kelp forest. This tank contained a miniature ecosystem similar to the one outside the aquarium in the kelp beds of Monterey Bay.

Since that time, the aquarium has grown substantially. The original building was designed by the San Francisco firm Esherick, Homsey, Dodge and Davis (EHDD) as was the later addition. The original building forms one wing, and the new exhibits are in an extension to the north that is reached by a walkway on the second floor. By connecting the two wings on the second floor, public access to the waterfront deck is preserved. In the entrance area, which is part of the older wing, the remains of the sardine cannery equipment are restored in the lobby as a reminder of the former use of the site. Julie Packard, David Packard's marine biologist daughter and a key planner of the facility, claimed that “what people want at aquariums is to look at the real thing.”^⁹

In the sense that one “looks at the real thing,” this aquarium has gone to great lengths to contextualize the animals on display. Most are in shared tanks with other species that share the same natural habitat, and the building itself is structured around these distinctions. The “Outer Bay Wing” houses the largest exhibit (over one million gallons), one that focuses on the animals that live in the open ocean at the edge of Monterey Bay. These organisms include tuna, several varieties of sharks, sea turtles and barracuda. A young White Shark was on display when I visited, and it was the biggest attraction by far. Each time it circled near the window, the mass of people in the room leaned forward and a smattering of camera flashes went off (invariably followed by a staff member admonishing them for using flash photography).

The viewing area of this exhibit is clearly designed to resemble a movie theater. It is very dark, includes a balcony for additional seating, and guests typically line up in rows to watch. Next to the viewing window, an employee stands ready to answer questions and pass out “Seafood Watch” brochures. These brochures detail which fish are responsible food choices, and which are not based on a variety of environmental and health concerns. Many of the animals that are encouraged as food products are also on display in the aquarium, likening the visitor experience to an overgrown version of the lobster tank at a seafood restaurant.

Looking into this practice of recommending fish as food objects, the Monterey Bay Aquarium web site (www.montereybayaquarium.org) has expanded and regional versions of the list. In addition, there are links to expanded information about different fish with links to seafood companies. Within a few short clicks, a visitor can go from the Aquarium's home page to a page outlining the features of farm-raised California caviar with full nutritional information.

Monterey is a text in which the changing human relationship to nature can be read. The aquarium itself is housed in a former cannery that closed when the sardine populations in the surrounding area were decimated by overfishing. The Aquarium shows Monterey's transition from a landscape of production/exploitation to one of consumer consumption. The original boilers from the Hovden Cannery were restored and now form the centerpiece of the lobby display in the portion of the building partially based on the original structure. Changes in Monterey parallel similar changes in our society's relationship to the animal world.

In her essay “Changing Perceptions of Animals: A Philosophical View,” Lilly-Marlene Russow uses Heidegger's concept of “ready-to-hand” to discuss the changing perceptions of animals over the past 150 years. She maintains that because of increasing distance from the natural world, our societal attitude towards animals is changing from one of “ready-to-hand” to one of being “simply there.”^¹⁰ I would argue that the restoration of the cannery machinery is an attempt by the aquarium to remind the viewer of the earlier view of the marine life in Monterey Bay as being “ready-to-hand.” The fish existed purely to be exploited as quickly and efficiently as possible, thus fulfilling the criteria of being “ready-to-hand” in that they served a specific purpose and were only viewed within that context.

The modern aquarium, on the other hand, is an attempt to build up the status of the marine life as being “simply there.” Russow points out that this status actually provides the opportunity for greater understanding, because it “allows room for more depth and breadth.”^¹¹ The aquarium has a monumental task because humans have never existed side-by-side with fish in the way that humans lived with other terrestrial animals, like horses. Fish have always been the ultimate “ready-to-hand” animals because the general public was not exposed to fish outside of a food context until the 19^th Century creation of aquarium technology. In the case of early aquariums, as I have already shown, there was no real attempt to educate the viewer but merely to entertain (particularly in the case of Barnum).

As Rossow points out, a key change over the past 150 years has been in the emotional orientation towards animals. She cites the American tendency to neotenize (to see as children) animals as being central to this change, a tendency that is made obvious by the Monterey Bay Aquarium's display practices.^¹² This attitude carries with it the responsibility to care for animals in the same way it is necessary to care for children, while at the same time viewing animals as “cute and unspoiled.”^¹³ The sea otter exhibit is one clear example of this tendency; it is centrally located in the plan of the museum and is one of the biggest attractions, particularly at feeding time. The otters are hand fed by trainers and are given brightly-colored children's toys to play with. The exhibit titled “Flippers, Flukes and Fun” goes a step further and allows parents to dress their children up as whales, furthering neotenization by momentarily conflating sea mammals and their own children into one simultaneous vision (see fig. 2 & 3).

Where do fish fit into this view of the changing perception of animals? These examples of neotenization involve sea mammals- supporting my contention that even within the walls of the aquarium, fish are perceived as “Other” by their exclusion from the creation of emotional connections to sea life. The “Vanishing Wildlife” exhibit is subtitled “Saving Tunas, Turtles, and Sharks,” clearly pointing out it is a human responsibility to save these animals but at the same time it refrains from creating any closer connection to the tuna or sharks. In the case of the tuna, the aquarium identifies them as a food species and instructs the visitor (via wall signs) how to eat them responsibly by pointing out which species are the best choices. There is no attempt by the exhibit designer to neotentize tuna through “cute” cartoon drawings of happy tuna and there is nowhere you can dress your child up like an albacore.

Because all aquarium interactions with fish necessitate technological mediation, it is doubtful that fish will ever be looked at as anything but “Other.” Timothy Mitchell identified the panes of glass in 19^th Century Parisian arcades as central to creating distance, which he identifies as being the cause of the objectness inherent in the display of goods.^¹⁴ While retailing has changed, the basic display techniques of the aquarium have not. Fish are forever destined to be ordered on the other side of a transparent wall, with slightly evolved display techniques doing little to change this situation. The lone exception to distanced human-fish interaction at Monterey was in the exhibit titled “Sharks, Myth and Mystery.” In an apparent attempt to dispel some of the myths surrounding the most feared of all ocean species, a very small shark (less than one foot long) was displayed in a shallow tray so it's back and dorsal fin were exposed (see fig. 4). As the shark frantically swam the length of the twenty to thirty-foot long trough, human visitors groped it as it passed by.

While billed as an attempt to connect with the shark on display, the strangeness of the encounter and the powerlessness of the shark do more to feed into the exhibitionary complex's permanent display of power/knowlege.^¹⁵ Here, “Jaws” is turned into a scared and somewhat pathetic looking creature that spends its days doing nothing but trying (unsuccessfully) to escape the prodding fingers of tourists.

Only by re-evaluating the display practices to eradicate these internalized biases will human visitors to the aquarium be able to see fish as anything but decorative oddities meant to be viewed like a movie or a work of art. While the earliest aquariums were shaped by emerging exhibitionary display practices common to shopping arcades and World's Fairs, they came into their own and helped shape our impressions further. While fish are now be viewed at eye level and aquarium visitors have a better idea of what underwater environments look like (on a superficial level), the modern aquarium still clearly reverts to the underlying human bias against fish. Instead of looking at ways of changing their “Othered” status, the aquarium continues to shape the age-old human perception that fish are food and whales and sea otters are playful companions.

fig. 3: Interactive exhibit within “Flippers, Flukes & Fun.” Photo by the author.

fig. 4: Shark touch tank in “Sharks: Myth and Mystery.” Photo by the author.

Baxter, Gail Allison. “Monterey Bay Aquarium.” M. Arch diss., U.C. Berkeley, 1986.

Betts, John Rickards. “P.T. Barnum and the Popularization of Natural History,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Jun.- Sep., 1959), 353-368.

Dolins, Francine, ed. Attitudes to Animals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hoage, R.J., ed. Perceptions of Animals in American Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

Quammen, David. Monster of God: The Man Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 20003.

Russow, Lilly-Marlene. “Changing Perceptions of Animals, A Philosophical View,” in Perceptions of Animals in American Culture. Wasington, D.C.: The Smithsonian, 1989, 25-39.

Shepard, Paul. The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996.

Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for the Treatment of Animals, 1977 ed. New York: Avon, 1975.

Wolch, Jennifer and Jody Emel, eds. Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature- Culture Borderlands. New York: Verso, 1998.

2John Rickards Betts, “P.T. Barnum and the Popularization of Natural History”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Jun.- Sep., 1959), 355.

3Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for the Treatment of Animals, 1977 ed. (New York: Avon, 1975), 175.

4Singer, 179.

5Singer, 178.

6Kay Anderson, “Animals, Science, and Spectacle in the City,” in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (New York: Verso, 1998) 34.

7Anderson, 28.

9Gail Allison Baxter, “Monterey Bay Aquarium” (M. Arch diss., U.C. Berkeley, 1986), 14.

10Lilly-Marlene Russow, “Changing Perceptions of Animals, A Philosophical View,” Perceptions of Animals in American Culture (Wasington, D.C.: The Smithsonian, 1989) 27.

11Russow, 27.

12Russow, 33.

13Russow, 33.

14Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, (Berkeley: UC Press, 1998) 11.

15Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London and N.Y.: Routledge, 1999) 66.