Aquarium Video Presentations

Learn about monarch and other butterfly species from Richard L. James, a naturalist at Long Beach’s El Dorado Nature Center.

Huge natural disasters—from earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions to floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards—have had a profound effect on human history and civilization, often in surprising ways. According to Donald Prothero, humans have an unrealistic and irrational reaction to these natural disasters and fear the ones that are least deadly while taking for granted those that are the most likely killers.

California recently completed the designation of a new network of marine protected areas (MPAs) along its 800-mile coastline. The process has been heralded as a landmark event in marine resource management and conservation.

Dr. Hall is a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, teaching climate-related courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is the faculty director of the UCLA Center for Climate Change Solutions.

Dr. Maddalena Bearzi takes viewers inside the world of a marine mammal field scientist. She offers a firsthand understanding of cetacean behavior, as well as the frustrations, delights, and creativity involved in dolphin research.

Since 1968 Dr. Bernie Krause has traveled around the world recording and archiving the sounds of creatures and environments.

The largest oiled wildlife rescue and rehabilitation effort ever mounted took place in 2000 in South Africa when an iron ore ship, the Treasure, sank between the two largest breeding islands for African Penguins.

In 1997 Captain Charles Moore discovered plastic in the ocean in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Dubbed the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, this estimated three million tons of plastic debris is still growing in the Northeast Pacific between Hawaii and the West Coast. He spoke at the Aquarium on March 6, 2012.

Painter, photographer, and naturalist J.J. L'Heureux shared her photographs and stories from her eleven years of annual expeditions to Antarctica during her lecture on March 20, 2012.

In his lecture on February 15, 2012, Michael Mann discussed the “Hockey Stick,” a graph he created with his colleagues to depict changes in Earth’s temperature dating back to 1000 AD. Dr. Mann is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the departments of meteorology and geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute.