{"id":20070,"date":"2025-01-15T16:57:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T17:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20070"},"modified":"2025-01-15T18:32:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T18:32:04","slug":"monterey-bay-aquarium-director-julie-packard-to-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20070","title":{"rendered":"Monterey Bay Aquarium Director Julie Packard to Retire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Julie Packard, the marine biologist who has presided over the Monterey Bay Aquarium<\/a> since it opened in 1984 and shepherded it through the Covid pandemic<\/a>, announced her retirement as executive director on Wednesday. Ms. Packard has helped repurpose the thick-glassed fish museums of old into potent forces for ocean conservation action.<\/p>\n

Built with a $55 million donation by her parents, David and Lucile Packard of the tech giant Hewlett-Packard, the aquarium has received tens of millions of visitors. Sightseers at the aquarium, a Northern California institution, have taken in a number of world firsts: the successful exhibition and release of great white sharks; the reintroduction of orphaned Southern sea otter pups to the wild; and the large-scale display of creatures such as salmon snailfish and vampire squid, found far below the reach of sunlight in a region known as the midnight zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At a time when rising ocean temperatures are altering water chemistry, changing fish migration patterns and making marine life more susceptible to the effects of overfishing, Ms. Packard\u2019s staff has demonstrated how to restore ocean health by reducing plastic pollution and raising awareness of environmentally sustainable seafood. The aquarium\u2019s partner organization, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, has developed and deployed robotic submersibles that are transforming how scientists explore the ocean.<\/p>\n

A tall, gracious, casually elegant woman who wears her scholarship lightly, Ms. Packard has run the aquarium in a low-key, pragmatic way. \u201cLike my father,\u201d she said. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/p>\n

Why are you retiring now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019m not exactly retiring. I\u2019m transitioning to a leadership role on the board of trustees. I decided that it\u2019s a great time to hand over the reins to our next generation of leaders. We have a great team and are in a really good financial position.<\/p>\n

What do you think you\u2019ll miss most?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The day-to-day interactions with the scientists. Fortunately, as a board member, I\u2019ll still run into people in the hallways who have just figured out how to breed some obscure animal that no one\u2019s ever seen before. I love collaborating with passionate people who are really fired up about what they\u2019re doing as much as I love seeing a child\u2019s eyes light up at the sight of a giant sea bass or a bloodybelly comb jelly. Both give me great joy.<\/p>\n

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Julie Packard, the marine biologist who has presided over the Monterey Bay Aquarium since it opened in 1984 and shepherded it through the Covid pandemic, announced her retirement as executive director on Wednesday. Ms. Packard has helped repurpose the thick-glassed fish museums of old into potent forces for ocean conservation action.Built with a $55 million donation by her parents, David and Lucile Packard of the tech giant Hewlett-Packard, the aquarium has received tens of millions of visitors. Sightseers at the aquarium, a Northern California institution, have taken in a number of world firsts: the successful exhibition and release of great white sharks; the reintroduction of orphaned Southern sea otter pups to the wild; and the large-scale display of creatures such as salmon snailfish and vampire squid, found far below the reach of sunlight in a region known as the midnight zone.At a time when rising ocean temperatures are altering water chemistry, changing fish migration patterns and making marine life more susceptible to the effects of overfishing, Ms. Packard\u2019s staff has demonstrated how to restore ocean health by reducing plastic pollution and raising awareness of environmentally sustainable seafood. The aquarium\u2019s partner organization, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, has developed and deployed robotic submersibles that are transforming how scientists explore the ocean.A tall, gracious, casually elegant woman who wears her scholarship lightly, Ms. Packard has run the aquarium in a low-key, pragmatic way. \u201cLike my father,\u201d she said. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.Why are you retiring now?Well, I\u2019m not exactly retiring. I\u2019m transitioning to a leadership role on the board of trustees. I decided that it\u2019s a great time to hand over the reins to our next generation of leaders. We have a great team and are in a really good financial position.What do you think you\u2019ll miss most?The day-to-day interactions with the scientists. Fortunately, as a board member, I\u2019ll still run into people in the hallways who have just figured out how to breed some obscure animal that no one\u2019s ever seen before. I love collaborating with passionate people who are really fired up about what they\u2019re doing as much as I love seeing a child\u2019s eyes light up at the sight of a giant sea bass or a bloodybelly comb jelly. Both give me great joy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20072,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20070"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20073,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20070\/revisions\/20073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}