Boycott Monterey Bay Aquarium If They Won’t Boycott LBAM Spray

In the fall of 2007, the Monterey Bay Aquarium made no objections to allowing Monterey Bay, including the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, to be aerially sprayed with a pesticide compound that is toxic to aquatic life and illegal to introduce into water.

Rather than taking the very strongest stand to protect the sea otters and other aquatic creatures, the Monterey Bay Aquarium maintained an eerie silence regarding the California Department of Agriculture’s illegal ‘emergency’ spraying of Monterey. The Monterey Bay Aquarium refused to let concerned local residents come to make presentations regarding the dangers of the spray to their board members. They turned a blind eye and a deaf ear, and as a result the following damage was done to marine life and wildlife on the Central Coast of California:

At least 650 sea birds washed up dead on the beaches
Song birds and hummingbirds died and disappeared
Cats, dogs and rabbits were sickened and died
Fish died
Bees died

It is impossible to know how many sea otters may have died in the Monterey Bay as a result of the spraying. What we do know is how many sea otters are hanging onto existence by the merest thread in the Monterey Bay.

The Last of California’s Sea Otters
Once, sea otter populations flourished in the hundreds of thousands of members, stretching in an arc from Asia to Baja. However, the bloody fur trade of the 1700s-1800s resulted in what was believed to be the total extinction of California’s sea otters. Then, in the 1920’s, a tiny population of them was rediscovered and they were eventually protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.

Yet pesticides like DDT and the toxins in city runoff infiltrating the Monterey Bay have kept populations at dangerous lows.

Today, only 2800 sea otters remain in California. According to marine biologists, a single event, such as an oil spill, could wipe them out entirely. The precious sea otters would be gone forever.

Like beavers on the land, sea otters create and maintain ecosystems in the sea. They are a keystone species for the health of kelp forests.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium trades on the idea that they care about the otters and other marine life of Monterey, but they did nothing to protect wildlife from the CDFA’s chemical assault despite the fact that it is precisely the kind of cataclysmic disaster capable of pushing the tiny population of sea otters over the brink into permanent extinction.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Is Untruthful
The slogan of the aquarium, and its professed mission statement is:

“The mission of the non-profit Monterey Bay Aquarium is to inspire conservation of the oceans.”

Allowing, without protest, the dumping of toxic pesticides that have runoff and drifted into the sea is the polar opposite of conserving the ocean.

Following the 2007 aerial spraying, a sickly yellow-green sludge poured from the streets, through runoff tunnels, right into the bay, covering the Central Coast for miles with yellow foam, laden with the plastic microcapsules in which the pesticide was distributed and causing the deaths of marine birds and wildlife. Among the sea birds killed was the federally-protected Endangered Brown Pelican. The federally-protected Sea Otters inhaled, swam in and ate the pesticide in Monterey Bay and no one knows how many may have been sickened and killed.

Monterey Bay Aquarium certainly isn’t telling us.

Many of the animal exhibits in the aquarium take in their water directly from the bay. Did Monterey Bay Aquarium employees come into work the mornings following the spray to discover dead fish and marine mammals floating in the tanks? Were they given orders to dispose of the dead creatures before the public was let in?

Monterey Bay Aquarium isn’t telling us.

There’s so much money riding on it for them.

Behind the Scenes at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
In 2006, the Monterey Bay Aquarium profited from the nearly 1.9 million visitors who paid admission to the business at the price of $24.95 for adults and $15.95 for children. Their website received over 8 million visitors. This is huge business, all trading on the image the Monterey Bay Aquarium has successfully created in the public mind of caring for the health of marine life and habitat.

The time to prove themselves came in 2007 when it was announced that Monterey would be subjected to blanket pesticide application. Monterey Bay Aquarium failed in their self-proclaimed mission of conserving the ocean and hundreds, likely thousands and thousands, of wild creatures died.

The aquarium’s Executive Director, Julie Packard, writes interesting articles about her commitment to protecting the ocean from toxins, fighting global warming, conserving wildlife. What was she doing when the entire Central Coast was mobilized into an uproar over forcible aerial spraying of untested chemical compounds over people, animals, water and land? Why was Julie Packard silent when she should have been shouting loudest against the poisoning of Monterey Bay and its wildlife? What better fight could Julie Packard have spearheaded in 2007? Why did she fail? Why refuse to let local people come present to her staff about the harm of the spraying?

What happened at Monterey Bay Aquarium? Did A.G. Kawamura, a USDA bigwig, a government official show up in Julie Packard’s office last year, shut the door and blackmail her into creating a policy of silence regarding the exposure of sea otters, vital marine mammals, fish and sea birds to deadly, untested pesticides? Did they scare her so badly that she went along with them? Could money have changed hands? I have no idea. I’m only asking, asking, asking - what is going on?

Because the Monterey Bay Aquarium isn’t telling us.

Rather, they are continuing to take tickets and invite thousands of schoolchildren to visit the toxic Monterey Bay Aquarium which must be loaded to the ceiling with pesticide residues and deadly PM10 pollution as is the rest of the Central Coast now. They are continuing to trade on the unsupported claim that they are committed to protecting wildlife while allowing the government to spray Monterey, unhindered by a single protest. It could have been incredibly powerful for Julie Packard and her staff to invoke the Endangered Species Act in order to protect species like the sea otters and Brown Pelicans.

Any person who knowingly violates any provision of the Endangered Species Act may be liable for a civil penalty of not more than $25,000 for each offense, and a criminal penalty of not more than $50,000 and/or imprisonment for a period not to exceed 1 year.

CDFA ought to be facing this penalty right now, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium ought to be congratulating themselves for forcing the State and Feds to uphold their own laws! But, they have chosen silence.

What Can A Boycott of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Do?
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a business that relies upon millions of dollars in annual ticket sales to remain in operation. If people stop buying the tickets, the aquarium will go out of business.

A boycott acts as a way to put pressure on businesses that have lost their conscience. It reminds them that receiving our money is contingent on winning our approval of their company. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has lost public approval by failing to protest the aerial spraying of Monterey.

Numerous citizen testimonies emerged following the spraying of residents who live in the same neighborhood as the aquarium. Citizens and their pets fell grievously ill and went outside to witness the rafts of dead and dying seabirds wash up on their beaches. It would be indefensible for the Monterey Bay Aquarium to claim that bay wildlife and the animals in their care were not affected by the aerial dumping of toxic pesticides.

As we see it, they now have a choice. If the Monterey Bay Aquarium was blackmailed, threatened with punishments, they need to become transparent about that. I am completely confident that their millions and millions of patrons would rush to their aid if they knew that the government had interfered with the stated conservationist mission of the aquarium. The time to come clean about this is now.

Just this month, the Monterey County Court ruled that CDFA broke the law and violated the California Environmental Quality Act by declaring a false emergency and spraying Monterey. CDFA is now being viewed by the public as lawbreakers.

A boycott sends the message to the aquarium that they should not lump themselves in with these lawbreakers.

The Court ordered that an Environmental Impact Report be conducted prior to any further aerial spraying in Monterey.

If the Monterey Bay Aquarium staff came into work to discover dead fish and mammals floating in their display tanks, the time to come forward with that vital information is now. A boycott tells Julie Packard and every single employee at the aquarium that the truth about the injuries and death of wildlife is more important to the public than entertainment or money. The deaths of marine life and fouling of the bay and watershed need to form part of the basis of the EIR. Again, it is illegal to spray Checkmate (the pesticide CDFA used) in such a way that it gets in water. It got into the water. This is illegal and Monterey Bay Aquarium doubtless knows how much of it ended up in their tanks. They need to uphold their self-appointed mission and come clean about what happened after the spraying.

In a capitalist society, your dollar speaks loudest. A boycott tells Monterey Bay Aquarium that they need to uphold real protection of marine life if they want to stay in business.

It’s Not Enough To Abstain
For a boycott to have impact, you need to tell the offending business why you will not be giving them your money. If, in the past, you have sent donations to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, contact them to tell them you are withdrawing your financial support unless they come clean about the LBAM spraying of Monterey and its damage to wildlife. If you intended to buy tickets this year to take your family to visit the aquarium in Monterey,
phone the ticket office at (800) 756-3737 and tell them you have changed your mind about the trip because Julie Packard and her staff failed to protest the spraying of pesticides on endangered marine life.

It is unfortunate that private citizens so frequently have to act as the conscience for public businesses. Yet, this is a power that we hold and that power is in our refusing to support businesses that double-talk. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has the choice to live up to their mission of protecting marine life or to lose public trust and go out of business. Talk to them. Tell them that this is their choice. They cannot afford to remain silent.