A Fine Kettle of Fish

When Mac Rawls began fundraising efforts to build a Virginia Beach aquarium in the early 1980s, he had a hard time selling the idea to state legislators.
 
In 1982, he went to the General Assembly to plead for $1.2 million in funding to help get the project started. It was, unfortunately, a bit of bad timing.
 
“The Cousteau Society was at the General Assembly at the same time to build an ocean center, which eventually morphed into Nauticus,” said Rawls, former executive director of the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary.
 
Rawls described how well the Cousteau Society representative was making his case.
 
“I’m sitting up in the gallery listening and thinking, ‘He’s got all these guys sitting in their seats and I can’t even get in their office doors,’ ” Rawls said.
 
“They gave him $1.2 million,” he added, “and they gave me $200,000 just to keep it going. They got our money.”
Rawls used the experience to recharge his fundraising efforts back in Virginia Beach.
 
He told the mayor the city had been cheated out of what it deserved and needed to fight back. Rawls, local supporters and the Virginia Marine Science Museum Foundation began a lobbying campaign for state funding.
 
The following year, Rawls was back in Richmond asking legislators for funding. This time, he left with $2 million.
 
“That was more money than they had ever given to a nonstate institution,” Rawls said. Seeing how much support the project had gotten back in Virginia Beach, he added, had helped gain state support. City funding was allocated before construction began later that year, in 1983.
 
Nancy Creech served with Rawls on the facility’s original committee.
 
“Mac was indefatigable about trying to get people to buy into the idea that it was time for something like this in the city,” said Creech, an Aquarium trustee who is also president of the Virginia Beach Neptune Festival.
 
Much has changed over the years – the aquarium has tripled its original size and added two indoor aviaries, a 1.6 million-gallon Atlantic Coast habitat, and a one-third-mile-long nature trail connecting the museum’s two buildings.
 
At one point, the museum was named one of the top 10 marine facilities in the country until it was eventually displaced by newer, larger aquariums.
 
Aside from the physical transformation, the aquarium’s national reputation has evolved. It now operates a stranding response program as part of its Marine Animal Care Center. Each year, the program responds to about 300 strandings. The Aquarium just received a $4.2 million federal grant to study sea turtles and marine mammals.
 
“It’s an important part of what we do,” said Lynn Clements, executive director of the Aquarium. Several weeks ago, the Aquarium’s director of research and conservation went to Capitol Hill to brief  Congress about marine animal strandings.
 
“Research is becoming one of the legs of our stool. We’re gaining national prominence in that area as well.”
 
About 650,000 guests visit the Aquarium each year. Clements said one of the benchmarks for large aquariums is having more than 1 million guests annually.
 
The Virginia Aquarium could reach that level, she added, if the Virginia Aquarium & Owls Creek Master Plan is approved by the city later this year.
 
Clements said the long-range plan covers 1,200 acres. There have already been four public meetings, Clements said, and she anticipates the plan will be completed by mid-August.
 
Ideally, Clements said, alternative energy companies would locate within the borders of the corridor, as well as research companies. There are also detailed plans on preserving Owls Creek.
 
“We’re an economic engine,” she added. “We employ 150 people. We are a business inside Virginia Beach.”
In addition to the master plan, Clements wants to continue to grow the Aquarium’s national reputation as experts in research and marine animal strandings.
 
When Rawls created the facility 25 years ago, the former teacher and Virginia Beach school administrator wanted education to be at the forefront of the new museum’s mission. Hands-on exhibits that teach were the focus of the Aquarium’s early exhibits, and they remain so 25 years later.
 
“It helps the children make a connection to the marine environment, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Clements said. “Inspire them to care for the marine environment and help preserve it.”
 
“A lot of aquariums are just aquariums,” she added. “These aren’t just animal exhibits; they’re also interactive.”
 
When the Virginia Beach School Board proposed the idea of a science resource room in 1973, Rawls was a city school administrator who agreed to head a committee to determine the project’s feasibility. He is still surprised at how an idea to create a simple science room eventually evolved to the nationally recognized Aquarium it is now.
 
“I was very proud that its roots came out of the school system, and I think they have remained there,” Rawls said. “At the very beginning we worked hard to provide experiences to cause people to think.”