American Scientist

In a video posted on YouTube in March 2018, diver Rich Horner takes viewers through a tangle of marine trash. Shot off the coast of Bali, the video shows Horner swimming through masses of plastic bags, many bearing familiar snack labels, and occasionally encountering manta rays, fish, and jellyfish (below). The images are powerful because they contain jarring juxtapositions—the beautiful jellyfish and manta rays exist alongside discarded plastic and floating debris.

Compare these shocking images with the scenes below, which was recorded by a webcam at the Tropical Reef exhibit at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. The reef in this live stream, meant to mimic Palau’s famous Blue Corner, is teeming with fish and living coral, divorced from any human impact. You could stream this lovely image all day and not know that Palau is suffering from the same sorts of plastic pollution issues as Bali.

Both Horner’s viral video and the Aquarium of the Pacific’s webcam use visual rhetoric to make arguments for the preservation of the marine realm. Horner chooses to shock his viewers by showing human-caused destruction of the marine realm; the aquarium uses a gentle approach that creates wonder and love for a pristine, utopian view of a similar space. Although these two images seem like two sides of the same coin, working in conjunction to produce caring stewards of the sea, there is no guarantee that they will be seen by the same audiences. For optimal impact, public aquariums should borrow from Horner’s visual rhetoric to inspire a stronger conservation awareness in their visitors.

The Power of Public Aquariums

Public aquariums have one of the largest platforms for conservation education in the United States. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums reports that member institutions bring in 181 million visitors yearly, with the average visit lasting nearly four hours. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has an annual average of 1.8 million visitors, and a total of 58 million people have visited since they opened their doors in 1984. The demographics of these visitors are important: The majority of visitors are children or women between the ages of 25 and 35. The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago gave 142,064 free field trips to school-aged children in 2017. Compared with documentaries and online videos, zoos and aquariums reach a wider audience for longer time periods, which gives them a unique power and responsibility.

Most public aquariums list education as their major conservation initiative. American aquariums have a history of using marine exhibits to teach the public about basic biology, ecology, and conservation. When aquariums first opened to the public in the early 20th century, they used their tank spaces to shape visitors’ understanding of the submarine environment. Specialized exhibits were meant to portray local abundance of food fishes and proper use of those resources. Over time, aquariums have shifted tank narratives to tell other stories, about subjects ranging from the importance of local ecosystems to artificial reef building. Historians and sociologists have shown that these spaces have played a large role in shaping the way that Americans think about marine resources.

The conservation messaging at public aquariums must appeal to a wide array of visitors. Aquariums use a combination of tanks, signage, live shows, and tours to convey conservation messages. Aquarium exhibits are carefully crafted dioramas meant to teach the viewer about the natural history of an organism or an ecosystem. The idealism that makes the setting clear unintentionally disguises the current threats to these ecosystems. Historically, these spaces have used their tank designs to shape the way that the public understands and interacts with aquatic environments. However, these exhibits often fall short of the intended goal of inducing changes in conservation behaviors.

Studies such as those summarized in a 2012 report by the Chicago Zoological Society have shown that aquarium visitors are receptive audiences for conservation messaging, but that they find it difficult to perceive how their personal behaviors will effectively alleviate human impact on the marine realm. In addition, the study found that only a small minority of visitors tracked through aquarium visits read signage about pollution and climate change. Even those visitors who identify as worried about conservation spend significantly more time viewing tanks and live shows than engaging with conservation messaging. And for those who do read this kind of content, too much or the wrong kind of messaging can lead to conservation fatigue or psychosocial numbing, meaning viewers perceive the problem to be too large for personal, incremental changes to affect the outcome.

One way to change conservation messaging and induce new behaviors in visitors is to include both shock and solution messaging within exhibits. Recent advertising research shows that inducing shock can elicit an emotional response and subsequent action in readers. For instance, verbal warning labels on cigarettes have little to no impact on smoking behavior. However, a 2012 paper in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour showed that including shocking visual images of smoking-related ailments induced behavioral changes in smokers. Evidence for the effectiveness of shock advertising is mixed, according to a 2013 study in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour by Sara Parry of Bangor University and colleagues. Many people associate this route with sensationalism rather than education. Nevertheless, shocking viewers with unexpected visuals is one way to increase the visibility of current issues.

Shock messaging may be especially effective when paired with solutions. Studies of journalism suggest that reporting on problems and possible solutions simultaneously results in more action taken by the public. Journalists who focus on solutions report increased awareness and action among readers, as well as a happier readership, with such news articles reaching a wider audience.

Combining shock and solutions messaging in tank designs will result in both an increased awareness of human impact on marine environments and immediate actions visitors can take to lessen those effects. By placing evidence of human encroachment in the tanks—such as plastic water bottles, chip bags, and deflated helium balloons—next to messaging about how to prevent further environmental degradation, aquariums can use their space not only to teach about the wonders of the marine world, but also to truly show their visitors the effects that our society’s collective choices have on the destruction of those spaces.

Teaching with Tanks

Over the past century, aquarists have developed tank designs to shape the public’s understanding of the marine environment. The earliest tanks taught visitors about aquatic resources and the work of their fisheries communities. Over time, messaging has shifted to focus more on conservation. The tanks have never been simply mirrors of the natural world; instead they are avenues for telling stories to a public audience.

However, the history of tank rhetoric and the general structure of these visualizations shows how aquariums have traditionally hidden or minimized the impact of humans on marine environments. Most human activities, from breeding and stocking fish to oil drilling, appear in a positive light in tank design. Conversations about humans’ negative effects are relegated to lengthy text that is often displayed far from tanks.

New tank exhibits designed to change behaviors associated with climate change and plastic pollution must go further than their predecessors did to show negative human impact on marine resources. Using tanks both to educate visitors and change their habits is nothing new for aquariums. They have been doing so for a variety of messaging goals since their earliest inceptions.

The earliest aquariums in the United States were a joint effort between state and federal fish and wildlife agencies and conservation clubs. Both the New York Aquarium (now at Coney Island) and the Philadelphia Aquarium (now defunct) worked closely with their respective fish and wildlife departments. At the time, fisheries groups were largely concerned with the waning number of food and sport fishes in American waters; a resource that had once seemed endlessly abundant was noticeably depleted by the 1910s.

To combat these concerns, state and federal groups tapped aquariums to teach about fisheries’ efforts to increase desired species. To do so, fisheries loaned aquariums fish stock to educate the public. The New York Aquarium received eggs and fry from hatcheries throughout the state. They used these fish in specialized exhibits built to showcase the work of hatcheries. These tanks told a story about the decline of a species, its importance to the economy, its general biology, and how the state was working to increase abundance.

In the mid-20th century, second-generation aquariums, starting with the Shedd Aquarium in 1930, began to use tanks to tell stories about ecology. As aquarium craft matured, aquarists developed ways of keeping both flora and fauna together in a tank. This approach allowed aquarists to build tanks that formed simplistic models of whole ecosystems. These tanks were accompanied by signs that informed visitors of relationships between the inhabitants.

Some of these ecosystem modeling tanks are truly spectacular. The Monterey Bay Aquarium kelp forest tank, built in 1984, teaches visitors about the importance of each member of an ecosystem through the modeling of a specific local community. The exhibit includes live kelp and a host of organisms, ranging from lower invertebrates to sharks. The tank, one of the tallest in the world, illustrates how aquariums sought to model pristine ecosystems to teach basic biological narratives. Although their online teaching guide includes several units on plastic pollution, none is specific to this exhibit. The narrative here is about the importance of place, but it doesn’t offer any insight into how to preserve it.

The newest type of ecosystem tank inserts a somewhat sanitized human infrastructure into marine environments. Aquariums with petrochemical sponsors often have at least one tank displaying a “rig reef.” These structures are part of a national “rigs to reefs” program started to defray the clean-up costs of removing decommissioned oil rigs and to continue the growth of new ecosystems by turning the structures into artificial reefs. The Texas State Aquarium’s Islands of Steel tank contains a decommissioned rig surrounded by sharks and rays. These tanks do not differ significantly from others in aquariums; they portray a complete reef system with colorful fishes and corals. The only difference is that the base of these ecosystems is obviously man-made. The tank is meant to teach visitors “not only how oil platforms can provide a valuable habitat, but why we need to harvest the ocean’s resources responsibly to protect marine life,” according to the museum’s website.

The politics of the tanks are difficult to navigate, but sanitizing the oil industry’s impact on marine life is a missed opportunity in this tank narrative. There are often no indications in the tank or on signage of the effects of oil drilling or oil spills on ecosystems. As Dolly JØrgensen, a historian of technology and the environment at the University of Stavanger in Norway, argues, the lack of conversation around these rigs and their presentation without comment mean that visitors will accept these man-made and often destructive structures as things that should be or have always been there.

Other rhetoric about ocean conservation can be equally confusing. Some of the most popular exhibits regarding plastic pollution are large art installations built with plastics found in the ocean. The Shedd Aquarium’s Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea places 11-foot-tall plastic sculptures, including a sea horse, an octopus, and a parrot fish, throughout exhibit space. Although signage provides context to these sculptures, it isn’t clear what these plastics look like in the water, what kind of harm they can cause, and what society’s role might be in reducing these harms. Although such exhibits are well-intentioned, no studies have shown that they increase awareness about plastic pollution.

Tanks for Conservation Conversations

One way to emphasize responsibility that humans have to mitigate their impacts on the marine world would be to juxtapose a pristine marine exhibit with an environmental tableau suffering from human impact.

A good example of this visual effect was created by two tanks meant to demonstrate the impact of acidification on coral reefs in the climate change exhibit “Feeling the Heat” (recently closed) at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps in San Diego. One tank contained a healthy coral reef, with various species of fish and coral in a colorful system. The tank next to it contained the exact same coral and fish, but the coral was bleached white from acidification. Alone, the model healthy tank was wondrous and the bleached tank was sad; but seen together they created a startling tableau of the effects of climate change. This exhibit is an example of shocking imagery. Literature on climate change was available to the viewer, but no information was provided about how we can change behaviors to mitigate its effects.

Other exhibits offer solutions-based information to visitors in innovative ways. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Real Cost Café is an interactive installation that allows visitors to order seafood from a menu. At the end of the order, the visitor is told whether their choices are sustainable or will contribute to the collapse of fishing stocks. This innovative exhibit and the corresponding information distributed nationally by the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program have been successful in changing visitors’ habits. A survey published in 2009 in Zoo Biology found that visitors provided with buying guides during their visits still were using them up to four months later. The combination of the interactive exhibit with easy-to-follow solutions successfully changed the visitors’ buying habits. The study also found that one important aspect of the program was “providing credible and specific information on problems and solutions to increase action-related knowledge.”

This research shows that aquariums can convey shocking information about the impact of personal decisions without detrimentally affecting their relationship with visitors. Indeed, giving visitors a sense of the effects of their daily decisions can make them feel more empowered by the information in these spaces.

A Need for Honest Visual Rhetoric

I suggest combining these two types of exhibits to present a tank demonstrating a common man-made marine problem and to include solutions to that issue within the exhibit. One of the most publicized issues in marine conservation is the one Horner highlights in his video: plastic pollution. Developing a tank that contains common human waste found in the ocean, including cigarette butts, beach toys, plastic bags, and single-use water bottles, would certainly shock a community used to viewing pristine ecosystems behind glass. These objects are immediately recognizable to visitors, and seeing this polluted tank juxtaposed to a traditional, pristine tank would force visitors to think about their use of plastics.

Combining this visual rhetoric with immediate signage promoting sustainable shopping bag use, reusable water bottles, beach cleanups, and recycling gives visitors immediate solutions to the problems of plastic pollution. Beyond the individual focus, aquariums can also point to policy-based solutions, such as bans on microbeads and single-use plastics. Visitors could be pointed to information about whether they should focus their efforts on reducing plastic straw use or on pressuring their legislators to track abandoned commercial fishing gear (another large source of pollution). The combination of personal and political goals for reducing impact helps visitors see a variety of ways in which they can support change. Based on evidence regarding shocking and solutions-based advertising and journalism, an exhibit using both could influence considerably the future conservation behaviors of aquarium visitors.

The explorer William Beebe described his first Caribbean dive as disorienting because it too clearly resembled the tanks he had seen at the New York Aquarium. He stated in his 1926 book The Arcturus Adventure that “the vivid memory of aquariums all over the world had deadened the stupendous marvel of it all.” Beebe eventually found that the experience of diving surpassed time spent staring at curated ecosystems in aquariums. Experiencing the cathedral of open water was more satisfying than cultured environs. (For more on Beebe, see Megan Raby’s feature in the July–August 2017 issue.)

Today’s divers would never mistake a reef excursion for an aquarium visit. They must come to grips with dying coral, depleted fish stocks, and the need to clear their vision of plastic debris. Aquarium visitors need to learn that the habitats that inspire them are threatened, and that they can contribute to meaningful collective change. We should be so lucky to be, like Beebe, disoriented by the apparent perfection of the marine realm.

It’s time to develop visual rhetoric that shocks viewers into understanding their personal responsibility for our deteriorating ocean while supplying them with immediate information on how to alleviate that impact. Public aquariums have a history of innovative tank rhetoric, and they reach a wide audience capable of changing their habits. Maybe it’s time to trash the tanks.