Aquarium of the Pacific | Aquarium Blogs | 10 Year Anniversary Stories
On May 16th 1989 a female harbor seal was born in Brooklyn, New York. She was named Elga in honor of a local philanthropist. In 1998 Elga found her way to California where she helped open the new Aquarium of the Pacific as one of the main attractions in the Southern California Baja Gallery. At the Long Beach-based Aquarium, the seal’s East Coast sounding Elga became the more SoCal sounding Ellie. On May 16th, 2009 the Saturday marine mammal crew celebrated her 20th birthday.
Based on my totally unscientific calculations more than one million visitors have seen our seal and sea lion presentations and our eldest sea lion has eaten over a hundred thousand herring while here at the Aquarium of the Pacific. This week’s blog not only includes the Pinniped Exhibit by the numbers, but also an update on Ellie the Harbor Seal’s upcoming 20th birthday.
Since the theme of “25 Random Things About Me” seems to be the “now” thing at social networking sites lately; this week’s blog is about 25 random things about the Aquarium of the Pacific that you may or may not have known.
While Ellie, our eldest harbor seal who was born and raised in New York carries herself around with a reserved dignity that is reminiscent of the East Coast Socialite that she was named after, Shelby, our other female harbor seal is a definitely an outgoing California Girl.
When Perry Hampton arrived in Long Beach in February of 1997 from Baltimore, one of his first duties was to help establish holding facilities for the many animals they would soon begin to accumulate for the Aquarium’s exhibits. These facilities provided interesting challenges and had them improvising creative solutions to problems on a daily basis. Perry Hampton is the Director of Husbandry at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
