Historical Timeline-MBA

Timeline Link-Monterey Bay Aquarium

For my historical timeline, I chose to cover the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in Monterey Bay California. The Monterey Bay Aquarium recently had its 35-year anniversary, so I thought it would be fun to highlight some of its early accomplishments. They also have a strong community voice and are well known in the Bay Area. The aquarium has many timeline-worthy moments, however, for this assignment, I wanted to narrow down my selections. I chose to focus on a few main issues up until 2014. Some of the key moments I included range from their conception in 1978 to their innovative exhibition featuring the lives of seahorses.

For information on the aquarium, I chose to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium website. The aquarium has a vast digital presence with an expansive website documenting each animal, exhibit and conservation effort. Every page offers new information and a plethora of links. I went to the About Us section first to find information that would benefit the timeline. This section led me to a page on the History of the aquarium. I also did a brief google search for both the MBARI and AZA websites. I wanted visuals to go along with my mentions of them in the aquarium. Once on the MBARI and AZA websites, I looked for any additional information that could be useful. The AZA website had a link to YouTube that led me to some great videos. These sites proved to have more than enough information to construct a timeline and collect photographs and videos. One challenge I had was figuring out when temporary exhibits closed. The dates were not immediately visible, and I had to do some digging. Fortunately, the aquarium gives website visitors access to news and press releases. The aquarium has saved everything and keeps it all organized, which is perfect for research moments like this. Another issue was getting links to work in the timeline. Fortunately, I read the prompt and saw that others had similar issues. To clear the problem up I had to open pictures and videos in separate windows. That seemed to clear up the problem. I also thought I could add the AZA and MBARI websites but had an issue with that. Instead, I found visual aids that worked for the slides, put them in new tabs, and made sure that they would be viewable in the final timeline. I also appreciated that the timeline creator website has examples and a video to help, so I took advantage.

References:

Association of Zoos and Aquariums. 2022. https://www.aza.org/

Monterey Bay Aquarium. 2022. About Us. https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/ 

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. 2022. https://www.mbari.org/

Seafood Watch. 2022. https://www.seafoodwatch.org/stories/twenty-years-of-seafood-watch