The state of Connecticut has given Norwalk’s Maritime Aquarium more than $2 million for a 10-year renovation plan, an "aquarium without walls". Officials say the goal is to create a more personal connection for folks with Long Island Sound.
WSHU’s Sabrina Garone spoke with aquarium president and CEO Jason Patlis to learn more.
WSHU: To start, could you explain what an "aquarium without walls" means in practice? Are we literally removing walls here?
JP: An "aquarium without walls" is both physical and conceptual in nature. It's a 10-year strategic plan to think about new ways to connect our guests and our visitors in our community to Long Island Sound and the ocean. When people come to the aquarium, they see amazing underwater wildlife — our seals, our turtles, our jellies, and our sharks — and experience all those behind acrylic, behind walls more or less. We are housed in a building that dates back to 1867, at the height of the industrial revolution. Our footprint is actually rather small, and our tanks are relatively small compared to many aquariums around the country. Our approach to introducing people to the ocean in Long Island Sound is to make the experience more interactive, more immersive, more intimate. The way to do that is for us to take away those acrylic walls and create touch experiences and hands-on experiences where guests can literally get their hands wet.
The second objective is to get people outside of the four walls of the aquarium literally into Long Island Sound. We've got a wonderful vessel program, and we do a lot of education and volunteer programs to get the public out along the shoreline, the beach, and the marshes to experience Long Island Sound personally and up close.
WSHU: Yeah, why is creating this better connection with Long Island Sound so important? Maybe you can start just by telling me, you know, what makes it such a unique and special habitat that we have here?
JP: Long Island Sound is one of the largest and most important estuaries in the country, and an estuary is a type of body of water where water flows in and out. The water comes in through the east, and then goes down all the way to the East River and alongside Manhattan — that's what makes Long Island Sound an estuary. And it's in one of the most crowded places in the country. How do we manage the wildlife and habitats of Long Island Sound alongside the 50 million people that live in the watershed? That's one of the ways that the sound is unique, and it's also one of the challenges that make conservation of Long Island Sounds such a priority. It's the reason why what we are trying to do is so important: it will give people a new appreciation of just how magnificent Long Island Sound is as a natural body of water, but also just how important it is to protect.
WSHU: It's like the more you like to see something and experience something. The more inclined you are to care about it, right?
JP: Yes, and it's a quote that's attributed to a lot of folks. I've heard it attributed to Jacques Cousteau, but it's: "'ou can only protect something that you love, and you can only love something that you know, and you can only know something by experiencing it.' That's paraphrasing it, but that's the gist of it, and as a statement of logic, it makes perfect sense.
WSHU: Definitely. So, I understand that the funding for this is coming from the state Bond Commission, right? I mean, it is a unique attraction for Connecticut. I feel like people joke sometimes, like the state is just a highway between New York and Boston. What's really going on in Connecticut? But I feel like people know the Maritime Aquarium as being something to do in Connecticut. I'm from Long Island, and we would go up to the Maritime Aquarium as kids all the way from here. I mean, there's got to be a tourism element to it, as well. Was that the pitch? How is this going to benefit the city of Norwalk and the state as a whole?
JP: That's a great question. Most certainly, there is economic benefit to what we do as an aquarium, in the programs that we have. As we were coming out of the pandemic, I worked with the city of Norwalk to commission an independent study for an economic impact analysis of the Maritime Aquarium, and everything that we provide both the city in the state. An analysis had not been done since 2007-2008. And the analysis done a couple of years ago by an independent firm concluded that we provide $56 million annually for the city of Norwalk in economic benefit, and $89 million annually to the state of Connecticut. That comes through tourism dollars — people come to visit, and then spend money in the area here in South Norwalk, staying overnight. It includes payroll, it includes the construction cost, and people who are associated with those projects, which we will certainly be doing with the bond funding that we just received. So, all of that goes to making the Maritime Aquarium a very large economic driver for the state of Connecticut.
As a transitory state between New York and Massachusetts, to New York City and Boston, one of the things that really is most unique about Connecticut is virtually the entire state is in the watershed of the Long Island Sound, meaning that all water that is that goes down your sink, used to water your lawn, washed off by rain on the streets, all finds its way into Long Island Sound. So no matter where you live in Connecticut, you're having an impact on the quality of the Long Island Sound ecosystem, and that message we really want to emphasize for folks living in the state, and for folks even traveling through the state, that the Long Island Sound is synonymous with Connecticut and vice versa. There's so much opportunity for residents of Connecticut to take advantage of the natural beauty of the state, both inland and on the coast.
WSHU: One of your strategic goals that I think is really nice is to foster lifelong learning and environmental stewards. Can we talk about that specifically? I understand you guys do a lot of programs in the field, like you mentioned earlier. I think that's really cool piece of all this.
JP: One of the things we take most pride in is our educational programming, and that goes back to the very early days of the creation of the aquarium when we were a Maritime center. There are many locals who still refer to us as the Maritime Center, when we were established in 1988. As a center, we were founded with the idea of being a learning center for maritime heritage, and a lot of the history and culture of the region. We've kept that educational mandate even as we've moved away from some of the cultural and become more of a traditional aquarium, showcasing Long Island Sound's wildlife and diversity. Our education programs reach about 60,000 students and children across the entire region in New York and Connecticut every year.
WSHU: Give us an idea of what's happening first. What new stuff can we expect to see in the early years of this strategic plan?
JP: The plan is divided into three phases. The first phase, years one through three, is really just shoring up our foundation and making sure our core business is the best it could be. The second phase is to expand the programs, expand the opportunities we have for folks to engage, and expand our exhibits in the ways that are consistent with our vision. The third phase is really to think of things that are transformational in the way we do our business. And so for that first phase — the next couple of years — we really are looking to improve some key exhibits, and the bond issue will go towards a lot of that work. We are going to be renovating our otter exhibit in the next couple of years, which is one of our oldest exhibits that really needs a significant renovation.
